arXiv subjects

Vincent Démery

Publications and source records attributed to Vincent Démery.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Rucks and folds: delamination from a flat rigid substrate under uniaxial compression

We revisit the delamination of a solid adhesive sheet under uniaxial compression from a flat, rigid substrate. Using energetic considerations and scaling arguments we show that the phenomenology is governed by three dimensionless groups, which characterize the level of confinement imposed on the sheet, as well as its extensibility and bendability. Recognizing that delamination emerges through a subcritical bifurcation from a planar, uniformly compressed state, we predict that the dependence of the threshold confinement level on the extensibility and bendability of the sheet, as well as the delaminated shape at threshold, varies markedly between two asymptotic regimes of these parameters. For sheets whose bendability is sufficiently high the delaminated shape is a large-slope "fold", where the amplitude is proportional to the imposed confinement. In contrast, for lower values of the bendability parameter the delaminated shape is a small-slope "ruck", whose amplitude increases more moderately upon increasing confinement. Realizing that the instability of the fully laminated state requires a finite extensibility of the sheet, we introduce a simple model that allows us to construct a bifurcation diagram that governs the delamination process.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2020

Geometry underlies the mechanical stiffening and softening of an indented floating film

A basic paradigm underlying the Hookean mechanics of amorphous, isotropic solids is that small deformations are proportional to the magnitude of external forces. However, slender bodies may undergo large deformations even under minute forces, leading to nonlinear responses rooted in purely geometric effects. Here we study the indentation of a polymer film on a liquid bath. Our experiments and simulations support a recently-predicted stiffening response [Vella & Davidovitch, Phys. Rev. E 98, 013003 (2018)], and we show that the system softens at large slopes, in agreement with our theory that addresses small and large deflections. We show how stiffening and softening emanate from nontrivial yet generic features of the stress and displacement fields.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2020

Colloidal transport in bacteria suspensions: from bacteria scattering to anomalous and enhanced diffusion

Colloids coupled to a bath of swimming cells generically display enhanced diffusion. This transport dynamics stems from a subtle interplay between the active and passive particles that still resists our understanding despite decades of intense research. Here, we tackle the root of the problem by providing a quantitative characterisation of the single scattering events between a colloid and a bacterium. Based on our experiments, we build a minimal model that quantitatively predicts the geometry of the scattering trajectories, and enhanced colloidal diffusion at long times. This quantitative confrontation between theory and experiments elucidates the microscopic origin of enhanced transport. Collisions are solely ruled by stochastic contact interactions responsible both for genuine anomalous diffusion at short times and enhanced diffusion at long times with no ballistic regime at any scale.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2019

Bath-Mediated Interactions between Driven Tracers in Dense Single-Files

Single-file transport, where particles cannot bypass each other, has been observed in various experimental setups. In such systems, the behaviour of a tracer particle (TP) is subdiffusive, which originates from strong correlations between particles. These correlations are especially marked when the TP is driven and leads to inhomogeneous density profiles. Determining the impact of this inhomogeneity when several TPs are driven in the system is a key question, related to the general issue of bath-mediated interactions, which are known to induce collective motion and lead to the formation of clusters or lanes in a variety of systems. Quantifying this collective behaviour, the emerging interactions and their dependence on the amplitude of forces driving the TPs, remains a challenging but largely unresolved issue. Here, considering dense single-file systems, we analytically determine the entire dynamics of the correlations and reveal out of equilibrium cooperativity and competition effects between driven TPs.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2019

Driven probe under harmonic confinement in a colloidal bath

Colloids held by optical or magnetic tweezers have been used to explore the local rheological properties of a complex medium and to extract work from fluctuations with some appropriate protocols. However, a general theoretical understanding of the interplay between the confinement and the interaction with the environment is still lacking. Here, we explore the statistical properties of the position of a probe confined in a harmonic trap moving at constant velocity and interacting with a bath of colloidal particles maintained at a different temperature. Interactions among particles are accounted for by a systematic perturbation, whose range of validity is tested against direct simulations of the full dynamics. Overall, our results provide a way to predict the effect of the driving and the environment on the probe, and can potentially be used to investigate the properties of colloidal heat engines with many-body interactions.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2018

Dynamics of a self-propelled particle in a harmonic trap

The dynamics of an active walker in a harmonic potential is studied experimentally, numerically and theoretically. At odds with usual models of self-propelled particles, we identify two dynamical states for which the particle condensates at finite distance from the trap center. In the first state, also found in other systems, the particle points radially outward the trap, while diffusing along the azimuthal direction. In the second state, the particle performs circular orbits around the center of the trap. We show that self-alignment, taking the form of a torque coupling the particle orientation and velocity, is responsible for the emergence of this second dynamical state. The transition between the two states is controlled by the persistence of the particle orientation. At low inertia, the transition is continuous. For large inertia the transition is discontinuous and a coexistence regime with intermittent dynamics develops. The two states survive in the over-damped limit or when the particle is confined by a curved hard wall.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2018

Mechanical factors affecting the mobility of membrane proteins

The mobility of membrane proteins controls many biological functions. The application of the model of Saffman and Delbrück to the diffusion of membrane proteins does not account for all the experimental measurements. These discrepancies have triggered a lot of studies on the role of the mechanical factors in the mobility. After a short review of the Saffman and Delbrück model and of some key experiments, we explore the various ways to incorporate the effects of the different mechanical factors. Our approach focuses on the coupling of the protein to the membrane, which is the central element in the modelling. We present a general, polaron-like model, its recent application to the mobility of a curvature sensitive protein, and its various extensions to other couplings that may be relevant in future experiments.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2018

Cylinder morphology of a stretched and twisted ribbon

A rich zoology of shapes emerges from a simple stretched and twisted elastic ribbon. Despite a lot of interest, all these shape are not understood, in particular the shape that prevails at large tension and twist and that emerges from a transverse instability of the helicoid. Here, we propose a simple description for this cylindrical shape. By comparing its energy to the energy of other configurations, we are able to determine its location on the phase diagram. The theoretical predictions are in good agreement with our experimental results.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2018

Memory effects in the ion conductor Rb$_{2}$Ti$_{2}$O$_{5}$

Recent studies on Rb2Ti2O5 crystals have demonstrated remarkable electrical properties. This material exhibits colossal electrical polarization between 200 K and 330 K. In the present work, we report on the observation of memory effects in Rb2Ti2O5 due to charge accumulation and we discuss the genuine memristive character of this material. An analytical model is proposed for the system, which takes into account the ionic diffusion and ionic migration and is in good agreement with the observed volatile memristive properties of the material.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2018

Unbinding transition of probes in single-file systems

Single-file transport, arising in quasi one-dimensional geometries where particles cannot pass each other, is characterized by the anomalous dynamics of a probe, notably its response to an external force. In these systems, the motion of several probes submitted to different external forces, although relevant to mixtures of charged and neutral or active and passive objects, remains unexplored. Here, we determine how several probes respond to external forces. We rely on a hydrodynamic description of the symmetric exclusion process to obtain exact analytical results at long times. We show that the probes can either move as a whole, or separate into two groups moving away from each other. In between the two regimes, they separate with a different dynamical exponent, as $t^{1/4}$. This unbinding transition also occurs in several continuous single-file systems and is expected to be observable.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2018

Pinning by rare defects and effective mobility for elastic interfaces in high dimensions

The existence of a depinning transition for a high dimensional interface in a weakly disordered medium is controversial. Following Larkin arguments and a perturbative expansion, one expects a linear response with a renormalized mobility $μ_{\text{eff}}$ . In this paper, we compare these predictions with the exact solution of a fully connected model, which displays a finite critical force $f_c$. At small disorder, we unveil an intermediary linear regime for $f_c < f < 1$ characterized by the renormalized mobility $μ_{\text{eff}}$. Our results suggest that in high dimension the critical force is always finite and determined by the effect of rare impurities that is missed by the perturbative expansion. However, the perturbative expansion correctly describes an intermediate regime that should be visible at small disorder.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2018

$N$-tag Probability Law of the Symmetric Exclusion Process

The Symmetric Exclusion Process (SEP), in which particles hop symmetrically on a discrete line with hard-core constraints, is a paradigmatic model of subdiffusion in confined systems. This anomalous behavior is a direct consequence of strong spatial correlations induced by the requirement that the particles cannot overtake each other. Even if this fact has been recognised qualitatively for a long time, up to now there is no full quantitative determination of these correlations. Here we study the joint probability distribution of an arbitrary number of tagged particles in the SEP. We determine analytically the large time limit of all cumulants for an arbitrary density of particles, and their full dynamics in the high density limit. In this limit, we unveil a universal scaling form shared by the cumulants and obtain the time-dependent large deviation function of the problem.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2017

Elastic interactions in damage models of brittle failure

The failure of brittle solids involves, before macroscopic rupture, power-law distributed avalanches of local rupture events whereby microcracks nucleate and grow, which are also observed in for an elastic interface evolving in a non-homogeneous medium. For this reason, it is tempting to relate failure to the depinning of an elastic interface. Here we compute the elastic kernel of the interface representing the damage field of a brittle solid. In the case of a damage model of rupture under compression, which implements the Mohr-Coulomb criterion at the local scale, we show that the elastic kernel is unstable, and hence is very different from the kernels of usual interfaces. We show that the unstable modes are responsible for the localization of damage along a macroscopic fault observed in numerical simulations. At low disorder, the most unstable mode gives the orientation of the macroscopic fault that we measure in numerical simulations. The orientation of the fault changes when the level of disorder is increased, suggesting a complex interplay of the unstable modes and the disorder.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2017

Fault orientation in damage failure under compression

The Mohr-Coulomb criterion is widely used in geosciences to relate the state of stress at failure to the observed orientation of the resulting faults. This relation is based on the assumption that the fault occurs along a plane that maximizes the Coulomb stress. Here, we test this hypothesis using an elastic, progressive damage model that implements the Mohr-Coulomb criterion at the local scale. We find that the orientation of the fault is not given by the Mohr-Coulomb criterion. Instead, for minimal disorder, it corresponds to the most unstable mode of damage in the model, which we determine through a linear stability analysis of the homogeneously damaged state. Our simulations show that microstructural disorder significantly affects the orientation of the fault, which, however, remains always far from the Mohr-Coulomb prediction.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2017

Universal Long Ranged Correlations in Driven Binary Mixtures

When two populations of "particles" move in opposite directions, like oppositely charged colloids under an electric field or intersecting flows of pedestrians, they can move collectively, forming lanes along their direction of motion. The nature of this "laning transition" is still being debated and, in particular, the pair correlation functions, which are the key observables to quantify this phenomenon, have not been characterized yet. Here, we determine the correlations using an analytical approach based on a linearization of the stochastic equations for the density fields, which is valid for dense systems of soft particles. We find that the correlations decay algebraically along the direction of motion, and have a self-similar exponential profile in the transverse direction. Brownian dynamics simulations confirm our theoretical predictions and show that they also hold beyond the validity range of our analytical approach, pointing to a universal behavior.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2016

Geometry-driven folding of a floating annular sheet

Predicting the large-amplitude deformations of thin elastic sheets is difficult due to the complications of self-contact, geometric nonlinearities, and a multitude of low-lying energy states. We study a simple two-dimensional setting where an annular polymer sheet floating on an air-water interface is subjected to different tensions on the inner and outer rims. The sheet folds and wrinkles into many distinct morphologies that break axisymmetry. These states can be understood within a recent geometric approach for determining the gross shape of extremely bendable yet inextensible sheets by extremizing an appropriate area functional. Our analysis explains the remarkable feature that the observed buckling transitions between wrinkled and folded shapes are insensitive to the bending rigidity of the sheet.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2016

From cylindrical to stretching ridges and wrinkles in twisted ribbons

Twisted ribbons subjected to a tension exhibit a remarkably rich morphology, from smooth and wrinkled helicoids, to cylindrical or faceted patterns. These shapes are intimately related to the instability of the natural, helicoidal symmetry of the system, which generates both longitudinal and transverse stresses, thereby leading to buckling of the ribbon. In this paper, we focus on the tessellation patterns made of triangular facets. Our experimental observations are described within an "asymptotic isometry" approach that brings together geometry and elasticity. The geometry consists of parametrized families of surfaces, isometric to the undeformed ribbon in the singular limit of vanishing thickness and tensile load. The energy, whose minimization selects the favored structure among those families, is governed by the tensile work and bending cost of the pattern. This framework describes the coexistence lines in a morphological phase diagram, and determines the domain of existence of faceted structures.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2015

The conductivity of strong electrolytes from stochastic density functional theory

Stochastic density functional theory is applied to analyze the conductivity of strong two species electrolytes at arbitrary field strengths. The corresponding stochastic equations for the density of the electrolyte species are solved by linearizing them about the mean density of ionic species, yielding an effective Gaussian theory. The non-equilibrium density-density correlation functions are computed and the conductivity of the electrolyte is deduced. In the bulk, our results give a simple derivation of the results of Onsager and coworkers who used very different methods. The method developed here can also be used to study electrolytes confined in one and two dimensions and interacting via either the three dimensional Coulomb interaction or the Coulomb interaction corresponding to that dimension of space.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗