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 …

Local polar order controls mechanical stress and triggers layer formation in Myxococcus xanthus colonies

E Han, C Fei, R Alert, K Copenhagen, MD Koch… - Nature …, 2025 - nature.com
Colonies of the social bacterium Myxococcus xanthus go through a morphological transition
from a thin colony of cells to three-dimensional droplet-like fruiting bodies as a strategy to …

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 …

Patterning in stratified epithelia depends on cell–cell adhesion

Y Mai, Y Kobayashi, H Kitahata, T Seo… - Life Science …, 2024 - life-science-alliance.org
Epithelia consist of proliferating and differentiating cells that often display patterned
arrangements. However, the mechanism regulating these spatial arrangements remains …

Elasticity tunes mechanical stress localization around active topological defects

L Bonn, A Ardaševa, A Doostmohammadi - Soft Matter, 2024 - pubs.rsc.org
Mechanical stresses are increasingly found to be associated with various biological
functionalities. At the same time, topological defects are being identified across a diverse …

Fourier-space Monte Carlo simulations of two-dimensional nematic liquid crystals

W Tang, X Chen, R Zhang - The Journal of Chemical Physics, 2024 - pubs.aip.org
Thermal fluctuations are ubiquitous in mesoscopic and microscopic systems. Take nematic
liquid crystals (LCs) as an example; their director fluctuations can strongly scatter light and …

[PDF][PDF] Fluctuation-induced motility of topological defects

L Bonn - 2022 - nbi.ku.dk
Topological defects are increasingly being identified in a wide range of biological systems
and are being revealed to play a functional role in diverse biological processes such as cell …