Finally, at higher particle activity, we observe a periodic "thrashing" mode. 19/20

So what does an arrested state look like when the particles are also swimming? Does the arrested state just translate with the particle swimming speed? No! Something new. Concentration bands form. Now the color below is the particle concentration. 16/20

The higher the activity, the higher the wavenumbers present in the eventual arrested state. We also see what appears to be an elastic snap-through instability in a bulk fluid. Fluid mechanics ASMR? 9/20

At yet higher activity (or reduced elasticity), the system desires to reach the classical aperiodic oscillatory states of active suspensions in Newtonian flows. But the LC is still able to arrest the system into a steady flowing state. These are all at high anchoring strength so far, btw. 8/20

Increasing the activity, those aligned particles become susceptible to a classical bend instability. But rather than exploding into wildly unsteady "turbulence 😬", the development is arrested by LC elasticity, which penalizes bending. A steady flowing state emerges with a big bending wave. 7/20

Let's start in 2D, with extensile, immotile particles. At low activity, randomly initialized particles align with the LC. The background color is the LC elastic energy. Arrows show the average local direction of particles; white dashes show the LC direction. The LC also rotates until happy. 6/20