title: Perspectives in active liquid crystals.
abstract: Active soft matter is a young, growing field, with potential applications to a wide variety of systems. This Theme Issue explores this emerging new field by highlighting active liquid crystals. The collected contributions bridge theory to experiment, mathematical theories of passive and active nematics, spontaneous flows to defect dynamics, microscopic to continuum levels of description, spontaneous activity to biological activation. While the perspectives offered here only span a small part of this rapidly evolving field, we trust that they might provide the interested reader with a taste for this new class of non-equilibrium systems and their rich behaviour.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK a.majumdar@bath.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Apala
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Majumdar
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, and Syracuse Biomaterials Institute, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA.
authors.forename: Marchetti M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Cristina
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Pavia, Via Ferrata 5, Pavia 27100, Italy.
authors.forename: Epifanio G
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Virga
keywords: active colloids; active liquid crystals; defect dynamics; multi-scale modelling; spontaneous flows