Disordered collective motion in dense assemblies of persistent particles

I will discuss how the nonequilibrium driving forces introduced by biological activity or by physical self-propulsion mechanisms generically affect the structure, dynamics and phase behavior of dense active media. I will use theory and computer simulations to analyse simple models of such active materials, in particular dense systems of self-propelled particles. I will borrow concepts from the equilibrium physics of amorphous and crystalline materials to provide a physical understanding of experimental observations performed with more complex systems such as self-propelled colloidal and granular systems, biological tissues, and bacterial colonies with a particular emphasis on the emergence of collective particle motion triggered by self-propulsion.

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