Micro-flock patterns and macro-clusters in chiral active Brownian disks

Chiral active particles (or self-propelled circle swimmers) feature a rich collective behavior, comprising rotating macro-clusters and micro-flock patterns which consist of phase-synchronized rotating clusters with a characteristic self-limited size. These patterns emerge from the competition of ali...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of physics. Condensed matter 2018-02, Vol.30 (8), p.084001-084001
Main Authors: Levis, Demian, Liebchen, Benno
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
active matter
Brownian dynamics
clustering
pattern formation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Chiral active particles (or self-propelled circle swimmers) feature a rich collective behavior, comprising rotating macro-clusters and micro-flock patterns which consist of phase-synchronized rotating clusters with a characteristic self-limited size. These patterns emerge from the competition of alignment interactions and rotations suggesting that they might occur generically in many chiral active matter systems. However, although excluded volume interactions occur naturally among typical circle swimmers, it is not yet clear if macro-clusters and micro-flock patterns survive their presence. The present work shows that both types of pattern do survive but feature strongly enhance fluctuations regarding the size and shape of the individual clusters. Despite these fluctuations, we find that the average micro-flock size still follows the same characteristic scaling law as in the absence of excluded volume interactions, i.e. micro-flock sizes scale linearly with the single-swimmer radius.
ISSN:0953-8984
1361-648X
DOI:10.1088/1361-648X/aaa5ec