Spontaneous segregation of self-propelled particles with different motilities

Condensed Matter journal club

Spontaneous segregation of self-propelled particles with different motilities

  • Event time: 11:30am
  • Event date: 13th April 2012
  • Speaker: Mike Cates (Formerly School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
  • Location: Room 2511,

Event details

Abstract

We study mixtures of self-propelled and passive rod-like particles in two dimensions using Brownian dynamics simulations. The simulations demonstrate that the two species spontaneously segregate to generate a rich array of dynamical domain structures whose properties depend on the propulsion velocity, density, and composition. In addition to presenting phase diagrams as a function of the system parameters, we investigate the mechanisms driving segregation. We show that the difference in collision frequencies between self-propelled and passive rods provides a driving force for segregation, which is amplified by the tendency of the self-propelled rods to swarm or cluster. Finally, both self-propelled and passive rods exhibit giant number fluctuations for sufficient propulsion velocities.
Soft Matter 8 Pages 2527-2534 (2012)
pdf version of paper

Authors

Samuel R. McCandlish, Aparna Baskaran and Michael F. Hagan

About Condensed Matter journal club

Given the diversity of research in the CM group, chosen topics vary widely. We tend to stick to high-impact journals - Nature, Science, PNAS and PRL have been popular - but this is not prescriptive..

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