Critical phenomenon of the order–disorder transition in incompressible active fluids

2014/10/10 by Leiming Chen, John Toner, Chiu Fan Lee · 57 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Characterization and Applications of Magnetic Nanoparticles #Compressibility #Critical exponent #Critical phenomena #Incompressible flow #Micro and Nano Robotics #Renormalization group #Scaling #Universality (dynamical systems) #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/17/4/042002

published in New Journal of Physics 17(4), 042002 (IOP Publishing) · 17pages, 4 figures

arxiv created 2014/10/10 · openalex publication_date 2015/04/02 · arxiv updated 2015/04/09 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

We study incompressible systems of motile particles with alignment interactions. Unlike their compressible counterparts, in which the order-disorder (i.e., moving to static) transition, tuned by either noise or number density, is discontinuous, in incompressible systems this transition can be continuous, and belongs to a new universality class. We calculate the critical exponents to in an expansion, and derive two exact scaling relations. This is the first analytic treatment of a phase transition in a new universality class in an active system.

Citations

• Spontaneously ordered motion of self-propelled particles
• Existence of Long-Range Order in One and Two Dimensions
• Absence of Ferromagnetism or Antiferromagnetism in One- or Two-Dimensional Isotropic Heisenberg Models
• Large-distance and long-time properties of a randomly stirred fluid
• Precise determination of critical exponents and equation of state by field theory methods
• Microscopic theory for the phase separation of self-propelled repulsive disks
• The critical properties of the two-dimensional xy model
• Ordering, metastability and phase transitions in two-dimensional systems
• Critical exponents of theN-vector model