Regensburg 2025 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 6: Active Matter II (joint session BP/CPP/DY)

BP 6.3: Talk

Monday, March 17, 2025, 15:30–15:45, H37

Isovolumetric dividing active matter — Samantha R. Lish¹, Lukas Hupe¹, Ramin Golestanian^1,2, and •Philip Bittihn¹ — ¹Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany — ²Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom

We introduce and theoretically investigate a minimal particle-based model for a new class of active matter where particles exhibit directional, volume-conserving division in confinement while interacting sterically, mimicking cells in early embryogenesis. We find that complex motion, synchronized within division cycles, displays strong collective effects and becomes self-similar in the long-time limit. Introducing the method of normalized retraced trajectories, we show that the transgenerational motion caused by cell division can be mapped to a time-inhomogenous random walk with an exponentially decreasing length scale. Analytical predictions for this stochastic process allow us to extract effective parameters, indicating unusual effects of crowding and absence of jamming. Robustness of our findings against desynchronized divisions, cell size dispersity, and variations in confinement hints at universal behavior. Our results establish an understanding of the complex dynamics exhibited by isovolumetric division over long timescales, paving the way for new bioengineering strategies and perspectives on living matter.

Keywords: active matter; proliferation; statistical physics; particle-based simulations