Many thanks to my colleagues @zwickergroup.bsky.social!
📄 arxiv.org/abs/2510.00827

🔬 This mechanism could be vital in biological cells to control condensates. Similarly, this method could allow creating micro-reactors for chemical assembly in synthetic applications or facilitate localized enzymatic activity for biomedical applications.

Taken together, advection modulates the initial dynamics — essentially independent of reactions — and biases the overall system toward a particular configuration, which is then maintained by reactions.

Interestingly, we find that multiple pattern sizes around the predicted one are stable!
Linear stability analysis reveals that emulsions become stable against Ostwald ripening from a minimal pattern size onwards.

Reactions arrest coarsening (left)
Advection accelerates early coarsening (right)

👉 We numerically and analytically determine the final equilibrium pattern size using a mapping to an equilibrium system.
👉 Looking at dissipation, we observe that advection peaks in early stages of coarsening.