Title

Instabilities and Oscillations in Isotropic Active Gels

Author(s)/Creator(s)

Shiladitya Banerjee, Syracuse UniversityFollow
M. Cristina Marchetti, Syracuse UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Date

10-5-2010

Keywords

condensed matter, soft condensed matter

Language

English

Disciplines

Physics

Description/Abstract

We present a generic formulation of the continuum elasticity of an isotropic crosslinked active gel. The gel is described by a two-component model consisting of an elastic network coupled frictionally to a permeating fluid. Activity is induced by active crosslinkers that undergo an ATP-activated cycle and transmit forces to the network. The on/off dynamics of the active crosslinkers is described via rate equations for unbound and bound motors. For large activity motors yield a contractile instability of the network. At smaller values of activity, the on/off motor dynamics provides an effective inertial drag on the network that opposes elastic restoring forces, resulting in spontaneous oscillations. Our work provides a continuum formulation that unifies earlier microscopic models of oscillations in muscle sarcomeres and a generic framework for the description of the large scale properties of isotropic active solids.

Additional Information

This manuscript is from arXiv.org, there is information at http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.1445

Recommended Citation

arXiv:1006.1445v2

Source

harvested from arXiv.org

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.