title: Muscle as a metamaterial operating near a critical point.
abstract: The passive mechanical response of skeletal muscles at fast time scales is dominated by long range interactions inducing cooperative behavior without breaking the detailed balance. This leads to such unusual "material properties" as negative equilibrium stiffness and different behavior in force and displacement controlled loading conditions. Our fitting of experimental data suggests that "muscle material" is finely tuned to perform close to a critical point which explains large fluctuations observed in muscles close to the stall force.
authors.affiliation: Inria, 1 rue Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves, 91120 Palaiseau, France and LMS, CNRS-UMR 7649, Ecole Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Caruel
authors.affiliation: LMS, CNRS-UMR 7649, Ecole Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: J-M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Allain
authors.affiliation: LMS, CNRS-UMR 7649, Ecole Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Truskinovsky
mesh_terms: D008954:Models, Biological; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000502:physiology*; D012518:Sarcomeres / Q000502:physiology