Spontaneous topological charging of tactoids in a living nematic

Genkin, Mikhail M.; Sokolov, Andrey; Aranson, Igor S.

doi:10.1088/1367-2630/aab1a3

Title: Spontaneous topological charging of tactoids in a living nematic

Journal Article · Fri Apr 13 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · New Journal of Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/aab1a3· OSTI ID:1437834

; Sokolov, Andrey; Aranson, Igor S.

Living nematic is a realization of an active matter combining a nematic liquid crystal with swimming bacteria. The material exhibits a remarkable tendency towards spatio-temporal self-organization manifested in formation of dynamic textures of self-propelled half-integer topological defects (disclinations). Here we report on the study of such living nematic near normal inclusions, or tactoids, naturally realized in liquid crystals close to the isotropic-nematic (I-N) phase transition. On the basis of the computational analysis, we have established that tactoid's I-Ninterface spontaneously acquire negative topological charge which is proportional to the tactoid's size and depends on the concentration of bacteria. The observed negative charging is attributed to the drastic difference in the mobilities of +1/2 and -1/2 topological defects in active systems. The effect is described in the framework of a kinetic theory for point-like weakly-interacting defects with different mobilities. Our dedicated experiment fully confirmed the theoretical prediction. Here, the results hint into new strategies for control of active matter.

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Research Organization:: Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division; National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-06CH11357

OSTI ID:: 1437834

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1435953

Journal Information:: New Journal of Physics, Journal Name: New Journal of Physics Vol. 20 Journal Issue: 4; ISSN 1367-2630

Publisher:: IOP PublishingCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United Kingdom

Language:: English

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Cited by: 18 works

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