Work

Analogies between growing dense active matter and soft driven glasses

Year: 2020

Type: article

Abstract: We develop a minimal model to describe growing dense active matter such as biological tissues, bacterial colonies, and biofilms, which are driven by a competition between particle division and steric repulsion.We provide a detailed numerical analysis of collective and single-particle dynamics.We show that the microscopic dynamics can be understood as the superposition of an affine radial component due to the global growth, and of a more complex nonaffine component that displays features typical of driven soft glassy materials, such as aging, compressed exponential decay of time correlation functions, and a crossover from superdiffusive behavior at short scales to subdiffusive behavior at larger scales.This analogy emerges because particle division at the microscale leads to a global expansion, which then plays a role analogous to shear flow in soft driven glasses.We conclude that growing dense active matter and sheared dense suspensions can generically be described by the same underlying physics.

Source: Physical Review Research

DOI: 10.1103/physrevresearch.2.043334

Authors: Elsen Tjhung, Ludovic Berthier

Institutions: Durham University, University of Cambridge, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Montpellier, Laboratoire Charles Coulomb

Language: English

Topic: Material Dynamics and Properties

Subfield: Materials Chemistry

Field: Materials Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,625

Funders: Simons Foundation, European Research Council