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Author(s): Aditi Chakrabarti, Divya Jaganathan, Robert Haussman, and L. Mahadevan We explore the dynamical response of the free surface of an ultrasoft solid driven by a localized moving pressure disturbance. Experiments reveal a steady V-shaped wake analogous to a surface Mach wedge. A simple geometric argument provides a qualitative explanation consistent with observations. A t… [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 138201] Published Thu Apr 02, 2026

Author(s): Shengkai Li, Trung V. Phan, Luca Di Carlo, Gao Wang, Van H. Do, Elia Mikhail, Robert H. Austin, and Liyu Liu We present an experimental and theoretical study of 2-D swarms in which collective behavior emerges from both direct local mechanical coupling between agents and from the exchange and processing of information between agents. Each agent, an air-table drone endowed with internal memory and a binary d… [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136...

Author(s): Yuanfeng Yin, Bokai Zhang, H. P. Zhang, and Shuo Guo The study of Serratia marcescens at the air-water interface reveals interfacial bacterial turbulence as a distinct class of active turbulence in which the size of the vortices produced scales with the length of the bacteria indicating a microscopic origin. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 138301] Published Mon Mar 30, 2026

Author(s): Henry Alston, Raphaël Voituriez, and Thibault Bertrand Stochasticity is a defining feature of the pairwise forces governing interactions in biological systems—from molecular motors to cell-cell adhesion—yet its consequences on large-scale dynamics remain poorly understood. Here, we show that reciprocal but randomly fluctuating interactions between parti… [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 128303] Published Fri Mar 27, 2026

Author(s): Lucie Vovard, Alexis Viel, Estelle Bastien, Lou-Anne Goutier, Gaëtan Jardiné, Jérémie Margueritat, Sylvain Monnier, and Thomas Dehoux Probing forces, deformations, and mechanical properties of cells are the hallmark of mechanobiology. Many techniques have been developed to this end that are largely based on deforming the cells and measuring the reaction force. In cells, an alternative approach was implemented in the mid-2010s base…...

Author(s): Wenjie Wei, Shiyuan Hu, Wenlong Chen, Xiaobin Dai, Zheng Jiao, Fanlong Meng, and Li-Tang Yan Escape of many active systems over potential barriers is subject to hydrodynamic interactions, but little is known about the active hydrodynamics in such nonequilibrium escape processes. Here, we combine simulations and theoretical analysis to examine how the hydrodynamics impacts the physics contro… [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 128301] Published...

Author(s): Lokrshi Prawar Dadhichi, Suvendra K. Sahoo, K. Vijay Kumar, and Sriram Ramaswamy We show theoretically that an imposed uniaxial anisotropy leads to new universality classes for the dynamics of active particles suspended in a viscous fluid. In the homogeneous state, their concentration relaxes superdiffusively, stirred by the long-ranged flows generated by its own fluctuations, a… [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 128302] Published Tue Mar 24...