Berlin 2018 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 57: Active Matter (joint session DY/CPP/BP)

CPP 57.10: Talk

Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 18:00–18:15, BH-N 243

Phase diagram, capillary waves, and interfacial stiffness of active-passive polymer mixtures — •Jan Smrek, Kostas Daoulas, and Kurt Kremer — Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany

The active-passive polymer mixtures serve as a model for phase separation of transcriptionally active and inactive DNA strands in nuclei of living cells. Is it possible to distinguish the equilibrium phase separation, driven by chemical differences, from the non-equilibrium one? Here, we study the interfacial properties of the phase separated steady states of the scalar active-passive polymer mixtures. We construct phase diagrams and extract the analogue of the equilibrium critical exponent β governing the density difference. Looking at the interface fluctuations, we find they follow the equilibrium capillary waves spectrum. This allows us to establish a mechanistic definition of the non-equilibrium interfacial stiffness and its dependence on the activity asymmetry. We show how the interfacial width depends on the activity ratio and comment on the finite size effects. Our results show the non-equilibrium steady state behaves in many respects as an equilibrium polymer mixture with LCST.