Abstract
We show that incompressible polar active fluids can exhibit an ordered, coherently moving phase even in the presence of quenched disorder in two dimensions. Unlike such active fluids with annealed disorder (i.e., time-dependent random white noise) only, which behave like equilibrium ferromagnets with long-range interactions, this robustness against quenched disorder is a fundamentally nonequilibrium phenomenon. The ordered state belongs to a new universality class, whose scaling laws we calculate using three different renormalization group schemes, which all give scaling exponents within 0.02 of each other, indicating that our results are quite accurate. Our predictions can be quantitatively tested in readily available artificial active systems and imply that biological systems such as cell layers can move coherently in vivo, where disorder is inevitable.
- Received 28 May 2022
- Accepted 14 September 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.188004
© 2022 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
synopsis
“Dirt” Is No Barrier to Flocking
Published 27 October 2022
Predictions indicate that disorder induced by immobile imperfections does not prevent organisms from moving collectively as a group.
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