Arrested development of active matter in liquid crystals

Many microorganisms must navigate strange biological environments whose physics are unique and counter-intuitive, with wide-ranging consequences for evolutionary biology and human health. Liquid crystals have emerged as a model anisotropic, viscoelastic fluid, and recent experiments have shown an alluring interplay between bulk fluid elasticity and flows generated by active stresses. We will discuss analytical and numerical insights into swimming through model liquid-crystalline fluids, including the observation of an arrested steady state with connections to the nonlinear pendulum equation and associated Jacobi elliptic function solutions.