Berlin 2024 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 32: Poster: Active Matter, Soft Matter, Fluids

DY 32.11: Poster

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 15:00–18:00, Poster C

Collective actuation in active elastic solids — •Katherina E. Hemmo, Kim L. Kreienkamp, and Sabine H. L. Klapp — Technische Universität Berlin

Collective motion is ubiquitous in various biological systems consisting of interacting active agents. Many of the coupling mechanisms rely on alignment couplings based on an exchange of heading vector information. However, collective motion can also emerge without explicit alignment interactions, solely through positional information exchange [1]. Building upon previous research on elastically coupled active solids [1-2], we here focus on active particles coupled via springlike interactions, leading to self-alignment in direction of displacement. For large enough activity, collective actuation, characterized by nearly synchronized oscillations of all particles around their equilibrium positions, can be observed [1-2]. Here, we address the question of how stable the collective actuation is when mixed groups include non-conforming members. Specifically, we introduce dissenters into the system, which do not engage in the self-alignment interactions but behave as Brownian particles in the otherwise active elastic sheet. Using particle-based simulations and normal mode analysis we find that an increasing number of dissenters weakens the collective actuation. We examine various geometric configurations of dissenters across different noise strengths to assess the most stable configurations and understand how the presence of dissenters impacts the elastic active solid as a whole.

[1] E. Ferrante, et al., New J. Phys. 15.9, 095011 (2013).

[2] P. Baconnier, et al., Nature 18.10, 1234 (2022).

Keywords: active solids; collective actuation