Spontaneous flow transition in active polar gels

By Raphael Voituriez, J. Joanny, J. Prost. 2005

314 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study theoretically the effects of confinement on active polar gels such as the actin network of eukaryotic cells. Using generalized hydrodynamics equations derived for active gels, we predict, in the case of quasi–one-dimensional geometry, a spontaneous flow transition from a homogeneously polarized immobile state for small thicknesses, to a perturbed flowing state for larger thicknesses. The transition is not driven by an external field but by the activity of the system. We suggest several possible experimental realizations.

Subfields: Cell Biology, Condensed Matter Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f080862f1ce9d54604daf5fdf5e760a62ab2869e

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In Cell Biology

In Condensed Matter Physics

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Citations in the corpus

Nonequilibrium physics in biology (2019, background): “Beyond a critical activity, a stationary state with homogenous polar order will be unstable against small perturbations (Voituriez et al., 2007).”
Topological active matter (2020, background): “This approach has lead to striking theoretical predictions such as the existence of two-dimensional ordered flocks [55, 56], giant number fluctuations [34, 57], spontaneous flow instabilities of active suspensions [58, 59], motility induced phase separation of purely repulsive particles [60, 61], an”
Symmetry, Thermodynamics, and Topology in Active Matter (2021, background): “[24] R Voituriez, Jean-François Joanny, and Jacques Prost,”
Geometry and topology of turbulence in active nematics (2014, background): “becomes unstable to a laminar flowing state once la ∼ L [15,28,29,34].”