Dresden 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 49: Active Matter V (joint session DY/BP)

DY 49.3: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 12. März 2026, 10:15–10:30, ZEU/0160

Contraction waves in pulsating active liquids: from pacemaker to aster dynamics — Tirthankar Banerjee¹, Thibault Desaleux¹, Jonas Ranft², and •Etienne Fodor¹ — ¹Department of Physics and Materials Science, University of Luxembourg, L-1511 Luxembourg City, Luxembourg — ²Institut de Biologie de l'ENS, Ecole Normale Supérieure, CNRS, Inserm, Université PSL, 46 rue d*Ulm, 75005 Paris, France

We propose a hydrodynamic theory to examine the emergence of contraction waves in dense active liquids composed of pulsating deformable particles. Our theory couples the liquid density with a chemical phase that determines the periodic deformation of the particles. This mechanochemical coupling regulates the interplay between the flow induced by local deformation, and the resistance to pulsation stemming from steric interaction. We show that this interplay leads the emergent contraction waves to spontaneously organize into a packing of pacemakers. We reveal that the dynamics of these pacemakers is governed by a complex feedback between slow and fast topological defects that form asters in velocity flows. In fact, our defect analysis is a versatile platform for investigating the self-organization of waves in a wide range of contractile systems. Our results shed light on the key mechanisms that control the rich phenomenology of pulsating liquids, with relevance for biological systems such as tissues made of confluent pulsating cells. Refs: arXiv:2509.19024, arXiv:2407.19955

Keywords: topological defects; contraction waves; phase transitions; active matter; hydrodynamics