2026
1
Active fluctuations induce buckling of living surfaces Preprint
Matteo Ciarchi; Andriy Goychuk; Erwin Frey
arXiv, 2026.
Active MatterSoft Condensed MatterStatistical Mechanics
@preprint{ciarchi_active_2026,
title = {Active fluctuations induce buckling of living surfaces},
author = {Matteo Ciarchi and Andriy Goychuk and Erwin Frey},
doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2602.24272},
year = {2026},
date = {2026-01-01},
urldate = {2026-01-01},
publisher = {arXiv},
abstract = {Active tissues exhibit tension fluctuations that are correlated in space and time. We study a minimal overdamped surface model in which such fluctuations enter as a zero-mean, multiplicative modulation of the local surface tension. Although the deterministic elastic dynamics (tension plus bending) stabilizes the flat state for all nonzero wave numbers, we find that sufficiently persistent active fluctuations generate positive ensemble growth rates for a finite band of Fourier modes, leading to stochastic buckling with wavelength selection. A non-Markovian theory based on the Novikov–Furutsu theorem captures the instability threshold and unstable band observed in simulations.},
howpublished = {arXiv},
keywords = {Active Matter, Soft Condensed Matter, Statistical Mechanics},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {preprint}
}
Active tissues exhibit tension fluctuations that are correlated in space and time. We study a minimal overdamped surface model in which such fluctuations enter as a zero-mean, multiplicative modulation of the local surface tension. Although the deterministic elastic dynamics (tension plus bending) stabilizes the flat state for all nonzero wave numbers, we find that sufficiently persistent active fluctuations generate positive ensemble growth rates for a finite band of Fourier modes, leading to stochastic buckling with wavelength selection. A non-Markovian theory based on the Novikov–Furutsu theorem captures the instability threshold and unstable band observed in simulations.