{"title":"Active Wetting: Statics and Dynamics","authors":"Amir Pahlavan, Michael Murrell","doi":"10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-061225-105656","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-061225-105656","url":null,"abstract":"Active wetting extends classical wetting physics to living systems, in which cells and tissues spread by generating internal forces rather than relying solely on passive interfacial tensions. Unlike passive systems, which evolve toward thermodynamic and mechanical equilibrium by minimizing free energy, active systems remain far from equilibrium due to continuous energy input and dissipation. Their dynamics are sustained, adaptive, and responsive to chemical and mechanical cues in ways that depart fundamentally from passive behavior. In addition, active systems lack a unified energetic or variational principle to describe their evolution. What insights can be drawn from passive models, and how these models might be generalized to account for activity, remain open questions. Studying active wetting may thus reveal new principles of nonequilibrium dynamics at soft and living interfaces, and offer deeper understanding of key biological processes such as wound healing, cancer invasion, and biofilm growth.","PeriodicalId":7925,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":22.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145908390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Luiza Angheluta, Anna Lång, Emma Lång, Stig Ove Bøe
{"title":"Full-Integer Topological Defects in Polar Active Matter: From Collective Migration to Tissue Patterning","authors":"Luiza Angheluta, Anna Lång, Emma Lång, Stig Ove Bøe","doi":"10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031620-105420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031620-105420","url":null,"abstract":"Polar active matter—including animal herds, aggregates of motile cells, and active colloids—often forms coordinated migration patterns, such as flocking. This orderly motion can be disrupted by full-integer topological defects representing localized disturbances in which directional alignment is lost. Such polar defects can serve as key organizing centers across scales, sustaining collective behavior such as swirling motion and other large-scale coherent states. Although significant progress has been made in understanding active matter principles in recent years, a quantitative understanding of how topological defects influence active polar matter is still needed. We present a brief overview of recent experimental observations in synthetic active colloids and various biological systems. We describe how polar defects mediate dynamical transitions and contribute to the spontaneous emergence of large-scale coherent states. We also discuss theoretical advances in the physical modeling of coupled processes involving polar defects and collective behavior in active polar matter.","PeriodicalId":7925,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":22.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145908297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Rheology of Living Tissues: From Cells to Organismal Mechanics","authors":"Sayantani Kayal, Anh Q. Nguyen, Dapeng Bi","doi":"10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-071125-054711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-071125-054711","url":null,"abstract":"Biological tissue rheology investigates the mechanical behavior of tissues, emphasizing their viscoelastic and plastic properties that enable both solid-like elasticity and fluid-like viscosity under mechanical stress. These mechanical characteristics are pivotal in various physiological processes, such as embryonic development, tissue remodeling, wound healing, and pathological conditions including cancer metastasis. The mechanical responses of tissues, shaped by cellular forces and extracellular matrix dynamics, are crucial for maintaining tissue integrity and functionality. Rheological behaviors such as viscoelasticity, plasticity, and active mechanical responses underlie critical biological functions, enabling tissues to adapt structurally and functionally to internal and external stimuli. Recent theoretical and experimental advances have illuminated the complex interplay among cellular mechanics, biochemical signaling, and tissue-level forces, highlighting their roles in governing tissue morphogenesis, repair, and disease progression. This review synthesizes current knowledge, identifies key challenges, and discusses future directions for research in biological tissue rheology.","PeriodicalId":7925,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":22.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145908298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Muhittin Mungan, Eric Clément, Damien Vandembroucq, Srikanth Sastry
{"title":"Self-Organization, Memory, and Learning: From Driven Disordered Systems to Living Matter","authors":"Muhittin Mungan, Eric Clément, Damien Vandembroucq, Srikanth Sastry","doi":"10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-082225-051908","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-082225-051908","url":null,"abstract":"Disordered systems subject to a fluctuating environment can self-organize into a complex history-dependent response, retaining a memory of the driving. In sheared amorphous solids, self-organization is established by the emergence of a persistent system of mechanical instabilities that can repeatedly be triggered by the driving, leading to a state of high mechanical reversibility. As a result of self-organization, the response of the system becomes correlated with the dynamics of its environment, which can be viewed as a sensing mechanism of the system's environment. Such phenomena emerge across a wide variety of soft matter systems, suggesting that they are generic and, hence, may depend very little on the underlying specifics. We review self-organization in driven amorphous solids, concluding with a discussion of what self-organization in driven disordered systems can teach us about how simple organisms sense and adapt to their changing environments.","PeriodicalId":7925,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":22.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145908299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Deformed States in Paraelectric and Ferroelectric Nematic Liquid Crystals","authors":"Oleg D. Lavrentovich","doi":"10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031424-011954","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031424-011954","url":null,"abstract":"Ground states of materials with orientational order ranging from solid ferromagnets and ferroelectrics to liquid crystals often contain spatially varying vector-like order parameter caused by inner factors such as the shape of building units or by the geometry of confinement. This review presents examples of how the shapes, chirality, and polarity of molecules and spatial confinement induce deformed equilibrium and polydomain states with parity breaking, splay, bend, and twist-bend deformations of the order parameter in paraelectric and ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals. Parity breaking results either from chirality of the constituent molecules, as a replacement of energetically costly splay and bend in paraelectric nematics, or in response to a depolarization field in the ferroelectric nematic. Both paraelectric and ferroelectric nematics exhibit a splay cancellation effect, in which the elastic and electrostatic energies of splay along one direction are reduced by an additional splay along orthogonal directions.","PeriodicalId":7925,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":22.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145908301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Statistical Field Theory of Equilibrium Amorphous Solids and the Intrinsic Heterogeneity Distributions that Characterize Them","authors":"Paul M. Goldbart","doi":"10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-071125-063050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-071125-063050","url":null,"abstract":"A rich variety of amorphous solids are found throughout nature, science, and technology, including those formed via the vulcanization of long, flexible polymer molecules. A special class—those featuring a wide separation between the very long timescales on which constraining bonds release and the much shorter timescales on which unconstrained degrees of freedom relax—exhibit equilibrium states and are therefore amenable to equilibrium statistical mechanics. A review is given of the least detailed (and thus most general) approach to equilibrium amorphous solids: statistical field theory. The field at the center of this theory is motivated by the aim of characterizing the amorphous solid state. This field, and the theory that governs it, turn out to be rather unusual in essential ways. What the statistical field theory approach predicts—and can predict—is discussed, including the following: the emergence of the solid and its intrinsic heterogeneity; fluctuations and connections with percolation; symmetry breaking and elasticity; and correlations and the information they furnish. Emphasis is placed on the idea, particular to amorphous solids, that such solids are naturally characterized in terms of distributions that describe the spatial heterogeneity of the thermal motions of their constituents. This information is subtly encoded in the wave vector dependencies of the average field and its correlations. The review concludes with some reflections on the applicability—or otherwise—of the ideas and results it explores to a variety of amorphous solids and related systems.","PeriodicalId":7925,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":22.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145908300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Phase Separation in Mixtures of Nematic and Isotropic Fluids","authors":"Margarida M. Telo da Gama, Rodrigo C.V. Coelho","doi":"10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031324-024345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031324-024345","url":null,"abstract":"Mixtures of nematic liquid crystals and isotropic fluids present a rich platform to explore the interplay between orientational order and concentration fluctuations, both experimentally and theoretically. These systems exhibit a wealth of phase behaviors and interfacial phenomena, shaped by the coupling of thermodynamic and kinetic effects. In this review, we present a unified theoretical framework that combines the Landau–de Gennes free energy for nematic ordering with the Cahn–Hilliard description of phase separation. This minimal model captures a wide range of characteristic behaviors, from phase separation and spinodal decomposition to the emergence of anisotropic domains and defect structures driven by the competition between interfacial anchoring and elastic interactions. We analyze the stability of the uniform isotropic and nematic phases and the phase separation dynamics and the interfacial behaviors that arise, and we reference the role of hydrodynamic interactions. The scope is further broadened by reference to active nematic emulsions, in which internal stresses drive nonequilibrium dynamics and novel steady states. Together, these phenomena underscore the versatility of nematic–isotropic mixtures as model systems in soft condensed matter physics.","PeriodicalId":7925,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics","volume":"157 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":22.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145658276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Siavash Monfared, Aleksandra Ardaševa, Amin Doostmohammadi
{"title":"Multiphase-Field Models of Tissues","authors":"Siavash Monfared, Aleksandra Ardaševa, Amin Doostmohammadi","doi":"10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-060625-061354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-060625-061354","url":null,"abstract":"Understanding how cells coordinate their behaviors to produce large-scale patterns and functions is central to deciphering biological processes ranging from tissue development and regeneration to cancer progression and morphogenesis. Despite advances in imaging and mechanical characterization, the role of physical forces in collective cell dynamics remains incompletely understood. Physics-based models are essential for complementing experimental data, offering access to high-resolution spatiotemporal fields, and enabling mechanistic insights into complex multicellular systems. This review focuses on dense, soft tissues, in which the mechanical deformation of one cell drives reorganization of its neighbors, giving rise to emergent behaviors such as orientational order and long-range force transmission. The multiphase-field model provides a powerful and versatile framework to investigate such systems, bridging biological phenomena and the nonequilibrium physics of active matter. We discuss the theoretical foundations of the model and its applications to a range of biological contexts, including cell migration, heterogeneous populations, confined geometries, and metastasis. We also emphasize the integration of simulations with experimental data, highlighting how this approach is reshaping our understanding of tissue mechanics, collective order, and force transmission. Finally, we outline current trends and future challenges in applying multiphase-field models to biology and soft matter physics.","PeriodicalId":7925,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics","volume":"120 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":22.6,"publicationDate":"2025-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145658277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"’t Hooft Anomalies in Metals","authors":"Dominic V. Else","doi":"10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031524-070514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031524-070514","url":null,"abstract":"I review some recent results on understanding the physics of metals in an exact nonperturbative way through the powerful field-theoretic concepts of emergent symmetries and ’t Hooft anomalies. A ’t Hooft anomaly is a discrete topological property that quantum field theories with global symmetries can have. I explain how many of the properties of metals can in fact be viewed as direct consequences of the anomaly. This allows a structural understanding of metals, including non-Fermi liquids, to be obtained even in the absence of any exact solution for the strongly coupled dynamics. I then outline the main limitations and outstanding questions.","PeriodicalId":7925,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics","volume":"107 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":22.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145536097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Quantum-Stabilized States in Magnetic Dipolar Quantum Gases","authors":"Lauriane Chomaz","doi":"10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-061125-032048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-061125-032048","url":null,"abstract":"Ultracold Bose gases of highly magnetic atoms exhibit unique interaction properties that lead to striking many-body behaviors, both at and beyond the mean field. A decade ago, a universal stabilization mechanism driven by quantum fluctuations was discovered in these gases. This mechanism prevents the systems from collapsing and instead allows exotic states of matter to arise, including ultradilute quantum droplets, crystallized quantum states, and especially supersolids. After introducing key features of dipolar quantum Bose gases—including their interactions, ground states, and excitations in a mean-field framework, as well as the onset of quantum-fluctuation stabilization—we review the progress made in understanding the emergence and intriguing properties of these quantum stabilized states. Both theory and experiments are discussed.","PeriodicalId":7925,"journal":{"name":"Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":22.6,"publicationDate":"2025-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145491841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}