Niladri Sarkar

Fluctuations and symmetries in two-dimensional active gels

Motivated by the unique physical properties of biological active matter, e.g., cytoskeletal dynamics in eukaryotic cells, we set up effective two-dimensional (2d coarse-grained hydrodynamic equations for the dynamics of thin active gels with polar or nematic symmetries. We use the well-known three-dimensional (3d descriptions (K. Kruse et al., Eur. Phys. J. E16, 5 (2005); A. Basu et al., Eur. Phys. J. E27, 149 (2008)) for thin active-gel samples confined between parallel plates with appropriate boundary conditions to derive the effective 2d constitutive relations between appropriate thermodynamic fluxes and generalised forces for small deviations from equilibrium. We consider three distinct cases, characterised by spatial symmetries and boundary conditions, and show how such considerations dictate the structure of the constitutive relations. We use these to study the linear instabilities, calculate the correlation functions and the diffusion constant of a small tagged particle, and elucidate their dependences on the activity or nonequilibrium drive.

Instabilities and diffusion in a hydrodynamic model of a fluid membrane coupled to a thin active fluid layer

We construct a coarse-grained effective two-dimensional (2d hydrodynamic theory as a theoretical model for a coupled system of a fluid membrane and a thin layer of a polar active fluid in its ordered state that is anchored to the membrane. We show that such a system is prone to generic instabilities through the interplay of nonequilibrium drive, polar order and membrane fluctuation. We use our model equations to calculate diffusion coefficients of an inclusion in the membrane and show that their values depend strongly on the system size, in contrast to their equilibrium values. Our work extends the work of S. Sankararaman and S. Ramaswamy (Phys. Rev. Lett., 102, 118107 (2009)) to a coupled system of a fluid membrane and an ordered active fluid layer. Our model is broadly inspired by and should be useful as a starting point for theoretical descriptions of the coupled dynamics of a cell membrane and a cortical actin layer anchored to it.Graphical abstract

Generic nonequilibrium steady states in an exclusion process on an inhomogeneous ring

We consider a one-dimensional totally asymmetric exclusion process on a ring with extended inhomogeneities, consisting of several segments with different hopping rates. Depending upon the underlying inhomogeneity configurations and for moderate densities, our model displays both localised (LDW) and delocalised (DDW) domain walls and delocalisation transitions of LDWs in the steady states. Our results allow us to construct the possible steady state density profiles for an arbitrary number of segments with unequal hopping rates. We explore the scaling properties of the fluctuations of LDWs and DDWs.

Nonequilibrium steady states in asymmetric exclusion processes on a ring with bottlenecks.

Generic inhomogeneous steady states in an asymmetric exclusion process on a ring with a pair of point bottlenecks are studied. We show that, due to an underlying universal feature, measurements of coarse-grained steady-state densities in this model resolve the bottleneck structures only partially. Unexpectedly, it displays localization-delocalization transitions and confinement of delocalized domain walls, controlled by the interplay between particle number conservation and bottleneck competition for moderate particle densities.

Acoustic horizons in steady spherically symmetric nuclear fluid flows

We consider a hydrodynamic description of the spherically symmetric outward flow of nuclear matter, accommodating dispersion in it as a very weak effect. About the resulting stationary conditions in the flow, we apply an Eulerian scheme to derive a fully nonlinear equation of a time-dependent radial perturbation. In its linearized limit, with no dispersion, this equation implies the static acoustic horizon of an analogue gravity model. We, however, show that time-dependent nonlinear effects destabilize the static horizon. We also model the perturbation as a high-frequency travelling wave, and perform a {\it WKB} analysis, in which the effect of weak dispersion is studied iteratively. We show that even arbitrarily small values of dispersion make the horizon fully opaque to any acoustic disturbance propagating against the bulk flow, with the amplitude and the energy flux of the radial perturbation undergoing a discontinuity at the horizon, and decaying exponentially just outside it.

Active-to-absorbing-state phase transition in an evolving population with mutation

We study the active to absorbing phase transition (AAPT) in a simple two-component model system for a species and its mutant. We uncover the nontrivial critical scaling behavior and weak dynamic scaling near the AAPT that shows the significance of mutation and highlights the connection of this model with the well-known directed percolation universality class. Our model should be a useful starting point to study how mutation may affect extinction or survival of a species.

Active to absorbing state phase transition in the presence of a fluctuating environment: feedback and universality

We construct and analyze a simple reduced model to study the effects of the interplay between a density undergoing an active-to-absorbing state phase transition (AAPT) and a fluctuating environment in the form of a broken symmetry mode coupled to the density field in any arbitrary dimension. We show, by using perturbative renormalization group calculations, that both the effects of the environment on the density and the latters feedback on the environment influence the ensuing universal scaling behaviour of the AAPT at its extinction transition. Phenomenological implications of our results in the context of more realistic natural examples are discussed.

Phases and fluctuations in a model for asymmetric inhomogeneous fluid membranes

We propose and analyze a model for phase transitions in an inhomogeneous fluid membrane, that couples local composition with curvature nonlinearly. For asymmetric membranes, our model shows generic non-Ising behavior and the ensuing phase diagram displays either a first- or a second-order phase transition through a critical point (CP) or a tricritical point (TP), depending upon the bending modulus. It predicts generic nontrivial enhancement in fluctuations of asymmetric membranes that scales with system size in a power-law fashion at the CP and TP in two dimensions, not observed in symmetric membranes. It also yields two-dimensional Ising universality class for symmetric membranes, in agreement with experimental results.

Phase transitions and continuously variable scaling in a chiral quenched disordered model

We elucidate the effects of chiral quenched disorder on the scaling properties of pure systems by considering a reduced model that is a variant of the quenched disordered cubic anisotropic O(N) model near its second order phase transition. A generic short-ranged Gaussian disorder distribution is considered. For distributions not invariant under spatial inversion ({hence chiral}), the scaling exponents are found to depend continuously on a model parameter that describes the extent of inversion symmetry breaking. Experimental and phenomenological implications of our results are discussed.

Generic instabilities in a fluid membrane coupled to a thin layer of ordered active polar fluid

We develop an effective two-dimensional coarse-grained description for the coupled system of a planar fluid membrane anchored to a thin layer of polar ordered active fluid below. The macroscopic orientation of the active fluid layer is assumed to be perpendicular to the attached membrane. We demonstrate that activity or nonequilibrium drive of the active fluid makes such a system generically linearly unstable for either signature of a model parameter