No Arabic abstract
We establish an explicit data-driven criterion for identifying the solid-liquid transition of two-dimensional self-propelled colloidal particles in the far from equilibrium parameter regime, where the transition points predicted by different conventional empirical criteria for melting and freezing diverge. This is achieved by applying a hybrid machine learning approach that combines unsupervised learning with supervised learning to analyze over one million of systems configurations in the nonequilibrium parameter regime. Furthermore, we establish a generic data-driven evaluation function, according to which the performance of different empirical criteria can be systematically evaluated and improved. In particular, by applying this evaluation function, we identify a new nonequilibrium threshold value for the long-time diffusion coefficient, based on which the predictions of the corresponding empirical criterion are greatly improved in the far from equilibrium parameter regime. These data-driven approaches provide a generic tool for investigating phase transitions in complex systems where conventional empirical ones face difficulties.
We study the glassy dynamics taking place in dense assemblies of athermal active particles that are driven solely by a nonequilibrium self-propulsion mechanism. Active forces are modeled as an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck stochastic process, characterized by a persistence time and an effective temperature, and particles interact via a Lennard-Jones potential that yields well-studied glassy behavior in the Brownian limit, obtained as the persistence time vanishes. By increasing the persistence time, the system departs more strongly from thermal equilibrium and we provide a comprehensive numerical analysis of the structure and dynamics of the resulting active fluid. Finite persistence times profoundly affect the static structure of the fluid and give rise to nonequilibrium velocity correlations that are absent in thermal systems. Despite these nonequilibrium features, for any value of the persistence time we observe a nonequilibrium glass transition as the effective temperature is decreased. Surprisingly, increasing departure from thermal equilibrium is found to promote (rather than suppress) the glassy dynamics. Overall, our results suggest that with increasing persistence time, microscopic properties of the active fluid change quantitatively, but the broad features of the nonequilibrium glassy dynamics observed with decreasing the effective temperature remain qualitatively similar to those of thermal glass-formers.
A number of novel experimental and theoretical results have recently been obtained on active soft matter, demonstrating the various interesting universal and anomalous features of this kind of driven systems. Here we consider a fundamental but still unexplored aspect of the patterns arising in the system of actively moving units, i.e., their segregation taking place when two kinds of them with different adhesive properties are present. The process of segregation is studied by a model made of self-propelled particles such that the particles have a tendency to adhere only to those which are of the same kind. The calculations corresponding to the related differential equations can be made in parallel, thus a powerful GPU card allows large scale simulations. We find that the segregation kinetics is very different from the non-driven counterparts and is described by the new scaling exponents $zsimeq 1$ and $zsimeq 0.8$ for the 1:1 and the non-equal ratio of the two constituents, respectively. Our results are in agreement with a recent observation of segregating tissue cells emph{in vitro}.
Active particles with their characteristic feature of self-propulsion are regarded as the simplest models for motility in living systems. The accumulation of active particles in low activity regions has led to the general belief that chemotaxis requires additional features and at least a minimal ability to process information and to control motion. We show that self-propelled particles display chemotaxis and move into regions of higher activity, if the particles perform work on passive objects, or cargo, to which they are bound. The origin of this cooperative chemotaxis is the exploration of the activity gradient by the active particle when bound to a load, resulting in an average excess force on the load in the direction of higher activity. Using a minimalistic theoretical model, we capture the most relevant features of these active-passive dimers and in particular we predict the crossover between anti-chemotactic and chemotactic behaviour. Moreover we show that merely connecting active particles to chains is sufficient to obtain the crossover from anti-chemotaxis to chemotaxis with increasing chain length. Such an active complex is capable of moving up a gradient of activity such as provided by a gradient of fuel and to accumulate where the fuel concentration is at its maximum. The observed transition is of significance to proto-forms of life enabling them to locate a source of nutrients even in the absence of any supporting sensomotoric apparatus.
Many self-propelled objects are large enough to exhibit inertial effects but still suffer from environmental fluctuations. The corresponding basic equations of motion are governed by active Langevin dynamics which involve inertia, friction and stochastic noise for both the translational and orientational degrees of freedom coupled via the self-propulsion along the particle orientation. In this paper, we generalize the active Langevin model to time-dependent parameters and explicitly discuss the effect of time-dependent inertia for achiral and chiral particles. Realizations of this situation are manifold ranging from minirockets which are self-propelled by burning their own mass, dust particles in plasma which lose mass by evaporating material to walkers with expiring activity. Here we present analytical solutions for several dynamical correlation functions such as the mean-square displacement and the orientational and velocity autocorrelation functions. If the parameters exhibit a slow power-law in time, we obtain anomalous superdiffusion with a non-trivial dynamical exponent. Finally we constitute the Langevin rocket model by including orientational fluctuations in the traditional Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. We calculate the mean reach of the Langevin rocket and discuss different mass ejection strategies to maximize it. Our results can be tested in experiments on macroscopic robotic or living particles or in self-propelled mesoscopic objects moving in media of low viscosity such as complex plasma.
The motion of an artificial micro-scale swimmer that uses a chemical reaction catalyzed on its own surface to achieve autonomous propulsion is fully characterized experimentally. It is shown that at short times, it has a substantial component of directed motion, with a velocity that depends on the concentration of fuel molecules. At longer times, the motion reverts to a random walk with a substantially enhanced diffusion coefficient. Our results suggest strategies for designing artificial chemotactic systems.