| 09/2026 Critical escape dynamics of an active particle moving on curved surfaces Maxim Root et al. On the macroscopic scale, active (self-propelled) objects moving through complex environments are often subject to effects arising from both the curvature of the surrounding surface and external influences such as gravity. We study the Kramers escape problem for active Brownian particles in two settings: motion in an external potential driven solely by gradient forces, and motion on a curved manif … |
| 09/2026 Speed up of passive tracers in mixtures with active chemical reactions Filipe C. Thewes et al. Diffusivity of passive tracers in complex mixtures is widely relevant for industrial applications and for probing biological systems. Interactions with the surrounding medium typically generate a drag force that suppresses tracer diffusion, although self-propulsion can accelerate tracers via active fluctuations. Similar effects are not understood in mixtures with particle conversion and exchange, … |
| 09/2026 Phase diagram morphology shapes droplet propulsion in chemical gradients Stefan Köstler et al. Droplets in complex environments often encounter compositional gradients that drive their propulsion. For example, surfactant gradients induce surface-tension-driven propulsion via the Marangoni effect. Here, we show that such propulsion emerges generically, even in the absence of surfactants. Employing a thin-interface approximation, we derive a compact expression for the droplet velocity in term … |
| 09/2026 An active soft glassy rheology model Raffaele Mendozza et al. Biological materials such as the cytoskeleton and confluent cell monolayers are active, dense systems continuously subjected to internal stresses and strains, making their rheological characterization essential. While activity in soft matter can be modeled across multiple length scales, its mechanical consequences remain strongly model dependent and no unified theoretical framework has yet emerged … |
| 08/2026 Topological Signatures of Hardness and Structural Order in Network-Forming Materials Yair Augusto Gutiérrez Fosado et al. Understanding how the topology of network forming materials influences their physical properties remains a longstanding challenge. Here, we investigate the topology of experimentally compatible atomistic models of amorphous silica together with the crystalline polymorphs cristobalite and quartz. By comparing multiple atomistic models of amorphous silica that equally reproduce neutron-scattering da … |
| 08/2026 Scaling behavior in non-reciprocal and odd conserved dynamics near criticality Martin Kjøllesdal Johnsrud et al. In recent years, non-reciprocity has been explored as a ubiquitous manifestation of non-equilibrium activity at the microscopic scales for various active matter systems, from mixtures of chemically active enzymes, colloids, and droplets, to engineered light-controlled active colloids and robotic meta-materials. A commonly used minimal model to describe the dynamics of a binary mixture of conserved … |
| 08/2026 Network Information Enhances Unreliable News Domain Detection Raphaela Keßler et al. Content-based detection of unreliable news is increasingly difficult, as low-reliability sources mimic credible journalism and generative AI makes fabricated content harder to flag. We ask whether network structure can improve news reliability classification, taking a domain-level approach that shifts the focus from individual articles to source reliability. From URL-sharing patterns in Telegram c … |
| 07/2026 Topological delocalisation of confined 3D active nematics Louise C. Head et al. Defect lines in 3D active nematic systems are intriguing topological singularities whose out-of-equilibrium dynamics remain elusive in confined settings. Here, we numerically study 3D active nematics confined within closed cylinders to elucidate the roles of geometry and activity. We reveal a competition between passive elasticity, which causes localisation of defects near edges, and activity, whi … |
| 07/2026 Mixing induced by microswimmers as probed by mutual information Yihong Shi et al. We investigate fluid mixing induced by microswimmers using mutual information as a global, information-theoretic measure of mixing efficiency. For a two-dimensional squirmer model in a confined domain, we compute numerically the swimmer-generated flows and solve the advection-diffusion equation for the transport of tracer particles in the fluid. We show that the spatial distribution of swimmers st … |
| 06/2026 Oscillating concentrations suppress condensate coarsening Mathias S. Heltberg et al. Living cells utilize condensates to spatially concentrate molecules in response to dynamic signals. For instance, nuclear condensates respond to oscillations in transcription factor levels in the nucleoplasm, including those involved in repairing multiple DNA breaks. To understand how oscillating signals affect condensates, we analyze a theoretical model using numerical simulations and analytical … |