Publications by Marko Popovic | EPFL Graph Search

Left-right symmetry of zebrafish embryos requires somite surface tension

Marko Popovic, Andrew Charles Oates, Sundar Ram Naganathan

The body axis of vertebrate embryos is periodically segmented into bilaterally symmetric pairs of somites(1,2). The anteroposterior length of somites, their position and left-right symmetry are thought to be molecularly determined before somite morphogenes ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

Scaling Description of Creep Flow in Amorphous Solids

Marko Popovic, Matthieu Wyart, Wencheng Ji, Thomas Willem Jan de Geus

Amorphous solids such as coffee foam, toothpaste, or mayonnaise display a transient creep flow when a stress E is suddenly imposed. The associated strain rate is commonly found to decay in time as gamma_ -t-nu, followed either by arrest or by a sudden flui ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2022

Thermally activated flow in models of amorphous solids

Marko Popovic, Matthieu Wyart, Wencheng Ji, Thomas Willem Jan de Geus

Amorphous solids yield at a critical value Sigma(c) of the imposed stress Sigma through a dynamical phase transition. While sharp in athermal systems, the presence of thermal fluctuations leads to the rounding of the transition and thermally activated flow ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2021

Inferring the flow properties of epithelial tissues from their geometry

Marko Popovic, Valentin Camille Druelle, Matthieu Wyart

Amorphous materials exhibit complex material properties with strongly nonlinear behaviors. Below a yield stress they behave as plastic solids, while they start to yield above a critical stress sigma(c). A key quantity controlling plasticity which is, howev ...

2021

Self-organized patterning of cell morphology via mechanosensitive feedback

Marko Popovic

Tissue organization is often characterized by specific patterns of cell morphology. How such patterns emerge in developing tissues is a fundamental open question. Here, we investigate the emergence of tissue-scale patterns of cell shape and mechanical tiss ...

2021

Thermal origin of quasilocalized excitations in glasses

Marko Popovic, Matthieu Wyart, Wencheng Ji, Thomas Willem Jan de Geus, Elisabeth Agoritsas

Key aspects of glasses are controlled by the presence of excitations in which a group of particles can rearrange. Surprisingly, recent observations indicate that their density is dramatically reduced and their size decreases as the temperature of the super ...

2020

How collective asperity detachments nucleate slip at frictional interfaces

Marko Popovic, Matthieu Wyart, Wencheng Ji, Thomas Willem Jan de Geus

Sliding at a quasi-statically loaded frictional interface can occur via macroscopic slip events, which nucleate locally before propagating as rupture fronts very similar to fracture. We introduce a microscopic model of a frictional interface that includes ...

National Academy of Sciences2019

Theory for the density of interacting quasilocalized modes in amorphous solids

Marko Popovic, Matthieu Wyart, Wencheng Ji, Thomas Willem Jan de Geus

Quasilocalized modes appear in the vibrational spectrum of amorphous solids at low frequency. Though never formalized, these modes are believed to have a close relationship with other important local excitations, including shear transformations and two-lev ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2019

Elastoplastic description of sudden failure in athermal amorphous materials during quasistatic loading

Marko Popovic, Matthieu Wyart, Thomas Willem Jan de Geus

The response of amorphous materials to an applied strain can be continuous or instead discontinuous if the initial configuration is very stable. We study theoretically how such a stress drop emerges as the system's initial stability is increased. We show t ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2018