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STATISTICAL PHYSICS

The oddity of active matter

Nature Physics volume 17, pages 1193–1194 (2021)Cite this article

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Active matter can have macroscopic properties that defy the usual laws of hydrodynamics. Now these tell-tale properties have been traced down to the non-equilibrium character and handedness of interactions between individual particles.

Matter can be brought into a non-equilibrium state by injecting energy through external manipulation — by rapidly stirring or heating it, for example. But active matter presents a different class of non-equilibrium system, in which energy is injected on the scale of individual particles, typically by endowing each of them with some self-propulsion mechanism1. For a macroscopic observer, this form of driving is more subtle, and one may wonder what type of experiment would reveal that a sample of matter is active. To provide insight into this question, Ming Han and co-workers derived the large-scale hydrodynamic properties of a specific model for active particles, as reported in Nature Physics2.

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Fig. 1: Spinning disks that exchange energy through friction upon collision serve as a model for chiral active matter.

References

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  1. Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Patrick Pietzonka

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  1. Patrick Pietzonka
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Correspondence to Patrick Pietzonka.

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Pietzonka, P. The oddity of active matter. Nat. Phys. 17, 1193–1194 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01318-9

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