Journal article
Reconfigurable flows and defect landscape of confined active nematics
- Abstract:
- Using novel micro-printing techniques, we develop a versatile experimental setup that allows us to study how lateral confinement tames the active flows and defect properties of the microtubule/kinesin active nematic system. We demonstrate that the active length scale that determines the self-organization of this system in unconstrained geometries loses its relevance under strong lateral confinement. Dramatic transitions are observed from chaotic to vortex lattices and defect-free unidirectional flows. Defects, which determine the active flow behavior, are created and annihilated on the channel walls rather than in the bulk, and acquire a strong orientational order in narrow channels. Their nucleation is governed by an instability whose wavelength is effectively screened by the channel width. All these results are recovered in simulations, and the comparison highlights the role of boundary conditions.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 6.0MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s42005-019-0221-x
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Communications Physics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 2
- Article number:
- 121
- Publication date:
- 2019-10-04
- Acceptance date:
- 2019-09-03
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2399-3650
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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pubs:1046372
- UUID:
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uuid:a385f00d-c085-4144-b620-4bea8bff5da5
- Local pid:
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pubs:1046372
- Source identifiers:
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1046372
- Deposit date:
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2019-09-22
Terms of use
- Copyright date:
- 2019
- Notes:
- © The Author(s) 2019. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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