"Pulsating active matter"
Alessandro Manacorda
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Physics and Materials Science - University of Luxembourg.
7 de marzo de 2024 - 11:30.
Aula 3B - Facultad de Física.
Abstract
Active matter has become a paradigmatic framework to study the collective behavior of complex and living systems: the introduction of self-propulsion as a kinetic energy injection has lead to striking phenomena such as flocking and motility-induced phase separation. Nevertheless, active units e.g. biological cells inject and dissipate energy over many degrees of freedom, not necessarily related with translational motion. Inspired by size synchronization and wave propagation in epithelial tissues, we introduce pulsating active matter as a new tool in the box of active systems. Allowing particles to actively deform their size or shape, we observe genuine non-equilibrium phases such as collective pulsation and wave propagation, qualitatively related to experimental observations in living tissues. Coarse-graining allows to formulate a hydrodynamic theory from the microscopic dynamics, elucidating the nature of the observed phases. I will overview results on molecular dynamics, lattice models and field theories of pulsating active matter and highlight open questions and future directions in the field.