Topological structure and dynamics of three-dimensional active nematics

Guillaume Duclos; Raymond Adkins; Debarghya Banerjee; Matthew S E Peterson; Minu Varghese; Itamar Kolvin; Arvind Baskaran; Robert A Pelcovits; Thomas R Powers; Aparna Baskaran; Federico Toschi; Michael F Hagan; Sebastian J Streichan; Vincenzo Vitelli; Daniel A Beller; Zvonimir Dogic

doi:10.1126/science.aaz4547

Topological structure and dynamics of three-dimensional active nematics

Science. 2020 Mar 6;367(6482):1120-1124. doi: 10.1126/science.aaz4547.

Authors

Guillaume Duclos^#¹, Raymond Adkins^#², Debarghya Banerjee^{3

4}, Matthew S E Peterson¹, Minu Varghese¹, Itamar Kolvin², Arvind Baskaran¹, Robert A Pelcovits⁵, Thomas R Powers^{6

5}, Aparna Baskaran¹, Federico Toschi^{7

8}, Michael F Hagan¹, Sebastian J Streichan², Vincenzo Vitelli⁹, Daniel A Beller¹⁰, Zvonimir Dogic^{11

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02453, USA.
² Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93111, USA.
³ Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
⁴ Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, 2300 RA Leiden, Netherlands.
⁵ Department of Physics, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
⁶ School of Engineering, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
⁷ Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, Netherlands.
⁸ Instituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo CNR, 00185 Rome, Italy.
⁹ James Frank Institute and Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Physics, University of California, Merced, CA 95343, USA. dbeller@ucmerced.edu zdogic@ucsb.edu.
¹¹ Department of Physics, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02453, USA. dbeller@ucmerced.edu zdogic@ucsb.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Topological structures are effective descriptors of the nonequilibrium dynamics of diverse many-body systems. For example, motile, point-like topological defects capture the salient features of two-dimensional active liquid crystals composed of energy-consuming anisotropic units. We dispersed force-generating microtubule bundles in a passive colloidal liquid crystal to form a three-dimensional active nematic. Light-sheet microscopy revealed the temporal evolution of the millimeter-scale structure of these active nematics with single-bundle resolution. The primary topological excitations are extended, charge-neutral disclination loops that undergo complex dynamics and recombination events. Our work suggests a framework for analyzing the nonequilibrium dynamics of bulk anisotropic systems as diverse as driven complex fluids, active metamaterials, biological tissues, and collections of robots or organisms.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Associated data

Dryad/10.25349/D9CS31

Grants and funding

R00 HD088708/HD/NICHD NIH HHS/United States