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Nonreciprocal phase separation in living chiral crystal

ORAL

Abstract

Swimming starfish embryos spontaneously assemble into living crystals that span thousands of spinning organisms and persist for tens of hours. Carrying an arrow of time, the embryos spin in the counter clockwise manner and interact non-reciprocally with each other. As a result, this living chiral crystal exhibits many interesting phenomena from order-disorder transition to chiral waves. Here, we investigate the phase diagram of living chiral crystals formed by embryos from different developmental stages. We observe a number of different time dependent phases, from mixed to fully separated to coexisting phases.

Presenters

  • Junang Li

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MI

Authors

  • Junang Li

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MI

  • Nikta Fakhri

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MI