Chirality, anisotropic viscosity and elastic anisotropy in three-dimensional active nematic turbulence
arXiv:2402.10020 · doi:10.1038/s42005-024-01720-8
Abstract
Various active materials exhibit strong spatio-temporal variability of their orientational order known as active turbulence, characterised by irregular and chaotic motion of topological defects, including colloidal suspensions, biofilaments, and bacterial colonies.In particular in three dimensions, it has not yet been explored how active turbulence responds to changes in material parameters and chirality.Here, we present a numerical study of three-dimensional (3D) active nematic turbulence, examining the influence of main material constants: (i) the flow-alignment viscosity, (ii) the magnitude and anisotropy of elastic deformation modes (elastic constants), and (iii) the chirality. Specifically, this main parameter space covers contractile or extensile, flow-aligning or flow tumbling, chiral or achiral elastically anisotropic active nematic fluids. The results are presented using time- and space-averaged fields of defect density and mean square velocity. The results also discuss defect density and mean square velocity as possible effective order parameters in chiral active nematics, distinguishing two chiral nematic states -- active nematic blue phase and chiral active turbulence. This research contributes to the understanding of active turbulence, providing a numerical main phase space parameter sweep to help guide future experimental design and use of active materials.
11 pages, 5 figures
References in corpus (36)
- Spontaneous motion in hierarchically assembled active matter
- Meso-scale turbulence in living fluids
- Rheology of Active-Particle Suspensions
- Topological active matter
- Spontaneous flow transition in active polar gels
- Active Turbulence
- Command of active matter by topological defects and patterns
- Defect dynamics in active nematics
- Lattice Boltzmann Simulations of Liquid Crystal Hydrodynamics
- Topological structure and dynamics of three dimensional active nematics
- On the structure of blue phase III
- Vorticity, Defects and Correlations in Active Turbulence
- Universal scaling of active nematic turbulence
- Tuning the random walk of active colloids
- Correlation lengths in hydrodynamic models of active nematics
- Rotation and propulsion in 3d active chiral droplets
- Three-Dimensional Active Defect Loops
- Multi-scale statistics of turbulence motorized by active matter
- Geometry and mechanics of disclination lines in 3D nematic liquid crystals
- Hydrodynamic instabilities in active cholesteric liquid crystals
- Active cholesterics: odder than odd elasticity
- Active nematics with anisotropic friction: the decisive role of the flow aligning parameter
- Chiral active hexatics: Giant number fluctuations, waves and destruction of order
- Topological states in chiral active matter: dynamic blue phases and active half-skyrmions
- Design rules for controlling active topological defects
- Chiral stresses in nematic cell monolayers
- Spontaneous Self-Constraint in Active Nematic Flows
- Spectral energy analysis of bulk three-dimensional active nematic turbulence
- Collective mechano-response dynamically tunes cell-size distributions in growing bacterial colonies
- Probing active nematics with in-situ microfabricated elastic inclusions
- Defect Line Coarsening and Refinement in Active Nematics
- A unified field theory of topological defects and non-linear local excitations
- Defect Loops in Three-Dimensional Active Nematics as Active Multipoles
- Splay-bend elastic inequalities shape tactoids, toroids, umbilics, and conic section walls in paraelectric, twist-bend, and ferroelectric nematics
- Coexistence of defect morphologies in three dimensional active nematics
- Vortex line entanglement in active Beltrami flows