Passive defect driven morphogenesis in nematic membranes

DJG Pearce, C Thibault, Q Chaboche… - Physical Review Letters, 2025‏ - APS
Orientational order is a common feature of many biological and synthetic materials.
Topological defects are discontinuities in this order that are often coupled to geometric …

Periodic orbits, pair nucleation, and unbinding of active nematic defects on cones

F Vafa, DR Nelson, A Doostmohammadi - Physical Review E, 2024‏ - APS
Geometric confinement and topological constraints present promising means of controlling
active materials. By combining analytical arguments derived from the Born-Oppenheimer …

Active topological defect absorption by a curvature singularity

F Vafa, DR Nelson… - Journal of Physics …, 2023‏ - iopscience.iop.org
Abstract We leverage the Born–Oppenheimer approximation to present a general
description of topological defects dynamics in p-atic materials on curved surfaces. Focusing …

Active actions: effective field theory for active nematics

MJ Landry - arxiv preprint arxiv:2309.15142, 2023‏ - arxiv.org
Active matter consumes energy from the environment and transforms it into mechanical
work. Notable examples from biology include cell division, bacterial swarms, and muscle …

Liquid crystal ground states on cones with antitwist boundary conditions

C Long, DR Nelson - Physical Review E, 2025‏ - APS
Geometry and topology play a fundamental role in determining pattern formation on 2D
surfaces in condensed matter physics. For example, local positive Gaussian curvature of a …

Gravitational response of topological quantum states of matter

G Jiang, YK Chen, S Iyer-Biswas, RR Biswas - Physical Review B, 2023‏ - APS
Identifying novel topological properties of topological quantum states of matter, such as
exemplified by the quantized Hall conductance, is a valuable step towards realizing …

Geometric control of active flows

J Neipel - 2024‏ - pure.mpg.de
The development of an organism starting from a fertilized egg involves the self-organized
formation of patterns and the generation of shape. Patterns and shapes are characterized by …