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Register a new userHydrodynamics of Active Defects: from order to chaos to defect ordering
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Topological defects play a prominent role in the physics of two-dimensional materials. When driven out of equilibrium in active nematics, disclinations can acquire spontaneous self-propulsion and drive self-sustained flows upon proliferation. Here we construct a general hydrodynamic theory for a two-dimensional active nematic interrupted by a large number of such defects. Our equations describe the flows and spatio-temporal defect chaos characterizing active turbulence, even close to the defect unbinding transition. At high activity, nonequilibrium torques combined with many-body screening cause the active disclinations to spontaneously break rotational symmetry forming a collectively moving defect ordered polar liquid. By recognizing defects as the relevant quasiparticle excitations, we construct a comprehensive phase diagram for two-dimensional active nematics. Using our hydrodynamic approach, we additionally show that activity gradients can act like electric fields, driving the sorting of topological charge. This demonstrates the versatility of our continuum model and its relevance for quantifying the use of spatially inhomogeneous activity for controlling active flows and for the fabrication of active devices with targeted transport capabilities.
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We introduce and study in two dimensions a new class of dry, aligning, active matter that exhibits a direct transition to orientational order, without the phase-separation phenomenology usually observed in this context. Characterized by self-propelled particles with velocity reversals and ferromagnetic alignment of polarities, systems in this class display quasi-long-range polar order with continuously-varying scaling exponents and yet a numerical study of the transition leads to conclude that it does not belong to the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless universality class, but is best described as a standard critical point with algebraic divergence of correlations. We rationalize these findings by showing that the interplay between order and density changes the role of defects.
We report phase separation and liquid-crystal ordering induced by scalar activity in a system of Soft Repulsive Spherocylinders (SRS) of aspect ratio $L/D = 5 $. Activity was introduced by increasing the temperature of half of the SRS (labeled textit{`hot}) while maintaining the temperature of the other half constant at a lower value (labeled textit{`cold}). The difference between the two temperatures scaled by the lower temperature provides a measure of the activity. Starting from different equilibrium initial phases, we find that activity leads to segregation of the hot and cold particles. Activity also drives the cold particles through a phase transition to a more ordered state and the hot particles to a state of less order compared to the initial equilibrium state. The cold components of a homogeneous isotropic (I) structure acquire nematic (N) and, at higher activity, crystalline (K) order. Similarly, the cold zone of a nematic initial state undergoes smectic (Sm) and crystal ordering above a critical value of activity while the hot component turns isotropic. We find that the hot particles occupy a larger volume and exert an extra kinetic pressure, confining, compressing and provoking an ordering transition of the cold-particle domains.
The equations of hydrodynamics including mass, linear momentum, angular momentum, and energy are derived by coarse-graining the microscopic equations of motion for systems consisting of rotary dumbbells driven by internal torques.
This is an easy-to-read introduction to foundations of deterministic chaos, deterministic diffusion and anomalous diffusion. The first part introduces to deterministic chaos in one-dimensional maps in form of Ljapunov exponents and dynamical entropies. The second part outlines the concept of deterministic diffusion. Then the escape rate formalism for deterministic diffusion, which expresses the diffusion coefficient in terms of the above two chaos quantities, is worked out for a simple map. Part three explains basics of anomalous diffusion by demonstrating the stochastic approach of continuous time random walk theory for an intermittent map. As an example of experimental applications, the anomalous dynamics of biological cell migration is discussed.
We provide a quantitative analysis of all kinds of topological defects present in 2D passive and active repulsive disk systems. We show that the passage from the solid to the hexatic is driven by the unbinding of dislocations. Instead, although we see dissociation of disclinations as soon as the liquid phase appears, extended clusters of defects largely dominate below the solid-hexatic critical line. The latter percolate at the hexatic-liquid transition in continuous cases or within the coexistence region in discontinuous ones, and their form gets more ramified for increasing activity.
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