arXiv subjects

N Narinder

Publications and source records attributed to N Narinder.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Time irreversibility, entropy production and effective temperature are independently regulated in the actin cortex of living cells

Living cells exhibit non-equilibrium dynamics emergent from the intricate interplay between molecular motor activity and its viscoelastic cytoskeletal matrix. The deviation from thermal equilibrium can be quantified through frequency-dependent effective temperature or time-reversal symmetry breaking quantified e.g. through the Kullback-Leibler divergence. Here, we investigate the fluctuations of an AFM tip embedded within the active cortex of mitotic human cells with and without perturbations that reduce cortex activity through inhibition of material turnover or motor proteins. While inhibition of motor activity significantly reduces both effective temperature and time irreversibility, inhibited material turnover leaves the effective temperature largely unchanged but lowers the time irreversibility and entropy production rate. Our experimental findings in combination with a minimal model highlight that time irreversibility, effective temperature and entropy production rate can follow opposite trends in active living systems, challenging in particular the validity of effective temperature as a proxy for the distance from thermal equilibrium. Furthermore, we propose that the strength of thermal noise and the occurrence of time-asymmetric deflection spikes in the dynamics of regulated observables are inherently coupled in living systems, revealing a previously unrecognized link between entropy production and time irreversibility.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2024

Dynamics of colloidal rods rotating in viscoelastic media

We experimentally investigate the in-plane rotational motion of ferromagnetic colloidal rods immersed in viscoelastic media and subjected to a rotating magnetic field. Unexpectedly, we observe significant angular velocity even at field frequencies an order of magnitude exceeding the step-out frequency, a regime where rods typically cease rotating in Newtonian fluids. This anomalous behavior arises from the interplay between the rapid rod actuation driven by the external field and the slower microstructural relaxation of the viscoelastic fluid. A minimal model incorporating memory effects quantitatively captures our experimental findings. Our study demonstrate a rather general case of microrheological probe dynamics in viscoelastic media where the behavior beyond step-out frequency depends strongly on the rheological parameters medium. Additionally, we derive an analytical expression for the rod orientation in the high-frequency limit, providing a potential method for extracting rheological parameters.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2022

Force generation in confined active fluids: The role of microstructure

We experimentally determine the force exerted by a bath of active particles onto a passive probe as a function of its distance to a wall and compare it to the measured averaged density distribution of active particles around the probe. Within the framework of an active stress, we demonstrate that both quantities are - up to a factor - directly related to each other. Our results are in excellent agreement with a minimal numerical model and confirm a general and system-independent relationship between the microstructure of active particles and transmitted forces.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2019

Active particles in geometrically confined viscoelastic fluids

We experimentally study the dynamics of active particles (APs) in a viscoelastic fluid under various geometrical constraints such as flat walls, spherical obstacles and cylindrical cavities. We observe that the main effect of the confined viscoelastic fluid is to induce an effective repulsion on the APs when moving close to a rigid surface, which depends on the incident angle, the surface curvature and the particle activity. Additionally, the geometrical confinement imposes an asymmetry to their movement, which leads to strong hydrodynamic torques, thus resulting in detention times on the wall surface orders of magnitude shorter than suggested by thermal diffusion. We show that such viscoelasticity-mediated interactions have striking consequences on the behavior of multi-AP systems strongly confined in a circular pore. In particular, these systems exhibit a transition from liquid-like behavior to a highly ordered state upon increasing their activity. A further increase in activity melts the order, thus leading to a re-entrant liquid-like behavior.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2018

Memory-induced transition from a persistent random walk to circular motion for achiral microswimmers

We experimentally study the motion of light-activated colloidal microswimmers in a viscoelastic fluid. We find that, in such a non-Newtonian environment, the active colloids undergo an unexpected transition from enhanced angular diffusion to persistent rotational motion above a critical propulsion speed, despite their spherical shape and stiffness. We observe that, in contrast to chiral asymmetric microswimmers, the resulting circular orbits can spontaneously reverse their sense of rotation and exhibit an angular velocity and a radius of curvature that non-linearly depend on the propulsion speed. By means of a minimal non-Markovian Langevin model for active Brownian motion, we show that these non-equilibrium effects emerge from the delayed response of the fluid with respect to the self-propulsion of the particle without counterpart in Newtonian fluids.

cond-mat.soft↗