Many active systems display nematic order, while interacting with their environment. In this Letter, we show theoretically how environment-stored memory acts an effective external field that aligns active nematics. The coupling to the environment leads to substantial modifications of the known phase diagram and dynamics of active nematics, including nematic order at arbitrarily low densities and arrested domain coarsening. We are motivated mainly by cells that remodel fibers in their extra-cellular matrix (ECM), while being directed by the fibers during migration. Our predictions indicate that remodeling promotes cellular and ECM alignment, and possibly limits the range of ordered ECM domains, in accordance with recent experiments.

中文翻译：

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主动向列学和细胞外矩阵重塑中的环境存储记忆


许多活性系统在与环境相互作用时表现出向列序。在这封信中，我们从理论上展示了环境存储的内存如何充当有效的外部场来对齐主动向列。与环境的耦合导致已知相图和活性向列动力学的重大修改，包括任意低密度的向列序和受阻域粗化。我们的动机主要是细胞在细胞外基质（ECM）中重塑纤维，同时在迁移过程中受到纤维的指导。根据最近的实验，我们的预测表明，重塑促进细胞和 ECM 对齐，并可能限制有序 ECM 域的范围。