Segregation, Finite Time Elastic Singularities and Coarsening in Renewable Active Matter

Abstract

Material renewability in active living systems, such as in cells and tissues, can drive the large-scale patterning of forces, with distinctive phenotypic consequences. This is especially significant in the cell cytoskeleton, where multiple species of myosin bound to actin, apply contractile stresses and undergo continual turnover, that result in patterned force channeling. Here we study the dynamical patterning of stresses that emerge in a hydrodynamic model of a renewable active actomyosin elastomer comprising two myosin species. We find that a uniform active contractile elastomer spontaneously segregates into spinodal stress patterns, followed by a finite-time collapse into tension carrying singular structures that display self-similar scaling and caustics. These singular structures move and merge, and gradually result in a slow coarsening dynamics in one dimension. In addition, the nonreciprocal nature of the underlying dynamics gives rise to exceptional points that are associated with a variety of travelling states – from peristalsis to swap and trains of regular and singular stress patterns, that may coexist with each other. Both the novel segregation and excitability are consequences of time reversal symmetry breaking of the underlying active dynamics. We discuss the implications of our findings to the emergence of stress fibers and the spatial patterning of myosin.