Regensburg 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe

DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 44: Droplets, Wetting, Complex Fluids, and Soft Matter (joint session DY/CPP)

DY 44.2: Vortrag

Freitag, 21. März 2025, 10:00–10:15, H47

Shape switching and tunable oscillations in adaptive droplets — •Tim Dullweber^1,2, Roman Belousov¹, Camilla Autorino^1,4, Nicoletta Petridou¹, and Anna Erzberger^1,3 — ¹European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany — ²University Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany — ³Institute for Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany — ⁴Faculty of Biosciences, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

Soft materials can undergo irreversible shape changes when driven out of equilibrium. When shape changes are triggered by processes at the surface, geometry-dependent feedback can arise. Motivated by the mechanochemical feedback observed in multicellular systems, we study incompressible droplets that adjust their interfacial tensions in response to shape-dependent signals. We derive a minimal set of equations governing the mesoscopic droplet states, controlled by just two dimensionless feedback parameters. We find that interacting droplets exhibit bistability, symmetry-breaking, excitability and tunable shape oscillations ranging from near-sinusoidal to relaxation-type. We apply our framework to model shape measurements in zebrafish embryos and identify a shape-switching mechanism promoting boundary formation. The underlying critical points reveal novel mechanisms for physical signal processing through shape adaptation in soft active materials, and suggest new modes of self-organization at the collective scale.

Keywords: Cell mechanics; Droplets; Active foams; Signal processing; Nonlinear dynamics