A nonequilibrium force can stabilize 2D active nematics

Maitra, Ananyo and Srivastava, Pragya and Marchetti, M Cristina and Lintuvuori, Juho S and Ramaswamy, Sriram and Lenz, Martin (2018) A nonequilibrium force can stabilize 2D active nematics. In: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 115 (27). pp. 6934-6939.

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Abstract

Suspensions of actively driven anisotropic objects exhibit distinctively nonequilibrium behaviors, and current theories predict that they are incapable of sustaining orientational order at high activity. By contrast, here we show that nematic suspensions on a substrate can display order at arbitrarily high activity due to a previously unreported, potentially stabilizing active force. This force moreover emerges inevitably in theories of active orientable fluids under geometric confinement. The resulting nonequilibrium ordered phase displays robust giant number fluctuations that cannot be suppressed even by an incompressible solvent. Our results apply to virtually all experimental assays used to investigate the active nematic ordering of self-propelled colloids, bacterial suspensions, and the cytoskeleton and have testable implications in interpreting their nonequilibrium behaviors.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Publisher:	NATL ACAD SCIENCES, 2101 CONSTITUTION AVE NW, WASHINGTON, DC 20418 USA
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belong to NATL ACAD SCIENCES, 2101 CONSTITUTION AVE NW, WASHINGTON, DC 20418 USA
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	18 Jul 2018 15:41
Last Modified:	18 Jul 2018 15:41
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/60229

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