Phase behaviour and dynamics of three-dimensional active dumbbell systems

Soft Matter, vol. 20, pp. 923–939

Abstract

We present a comprehensive numerical study of the phase behavior and dynamics of a three-dimensional active dumbbell system with attractive interactions. We demonstrate that attraction is essential for the system to exhibit nontrivial phases. We construct a detailed phase diagram by exploring the effects of the system's activity, density, and attraction strength. We identify several distinct phases, including a disordered, a gel, and a completely phase-separated phase. Additionally, we discover a novel dynamical phase, that we name percolating network, which is characterized by the presence of a spanning network of connected dumbbells. In the phase-separated phase we characterize numerically and describe analytically the helical motion of the dense cluster.

Authors 7

1. Claudio Basilio Caporusso

   Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Bari · University of Bari Aldo Moro

   Affiliation as printed

   Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Bari and INFN, Sezione di Bari, via Amendola 173, Bari, I-70126, Italy

2. Giuseppe Negro corresponding

   Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Bari · University of Bari Aldo Moro

   Affiliation as printed

   Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Bari and INFN, Sezione di Bari, via Amendola 173, Bari, I-70126, Italy

3. Antonio Suma

   Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Bari · University of Bari Aldo Moro

   Affiliation as printed

   Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Bari and INFN, Sezione di Bari, via Amendola 173, Bari, I-70126, Italy

4. Pasquale Digregorio

   Universitat de Barcelona

   Affiliation as printed

   Departement de Fisica de la Materia Condensada, Facultat de Fisica, Universitat de Barcelona, Martí i Franquès 1, E08028 Barcelona, Spain

   UBICS University of Barcelona Institute of Complex Systems, Martí i Franquès 1, E08028 Barcelona, Spain

5. Livio Nicola Carenza Aachen Instituut-Lorentz

   Leiden University · Koç University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Physics, Koç University, Rumelifeneri Yolu, 34450 Saryer, Istanbul, Turkey

   Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, P.O. Box 9506, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands

6. Giuseppe Gonnella

   Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Bari · University of Bari Aldo Moro

   Affiliation as printed

   Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Bari and INFN, Sezione di Bari, via Amendola 173, Bari, I-70126, Italy

7. Leticia F. Cugliandolo

   Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique · Institut Universitaire de France · Sorbonne Université · Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Hautes Energies

   Affiliation as printed

   CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Hautes Energies, LPTHE, Sorbonne Université, F-75005 Paris, France

   Institut Universitaire de France, 1 rue Descartes, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France