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Packed Swarms on Dirt: Two-Dimensional Incompressible Flocks with Quenched and Annealed Disorder

Leiming Chen, Chiu Fan Lee, Ananyo Maitra, and John Toner
Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 188004 – Published 27 October 2022
Physics logo See synopsis: “Dirt” Is No Barrier to Flocking

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)

Polymers & Soft MatterStatistical Physics & Thermodynamics

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“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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Authors & Affiliations

Leiming Chen1,*, Chiu Fan Lee2,†, Ananyo Maitra3,‡, and John Toner4,5,§

  • 1School of Material Science and Physics, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou Jiangsu, 221116, People’s Republic of China
  • 2Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
  • 3Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modélisation, CNRS UMR 8089, CY Cergy Paris Université, F-95032 Cergy-Pontoise Cedex, France
  • 4Department of Physics and Institute of Theoretical Science, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA
  • 5Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nöthnitzer Strasse 38, 01187 Dresden, Germany

  • *leiming@cumt.edu.cn
  • c.lee@imperial.ac.uk
  • nyomaitra07@gmail.com
  • §jjt@uoregon.edu

See Also

Hydrodynamic theory of two-dimensional incompressible polar active fluids with quenched and annealed disorder

Leiming Chen, Chiu Fan Lee, Ananyo Maitra, and John Toner
Phys. Rev. E 106, 044608 (2022)

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Vol. 129, Iss. 18 — 28 October 2022

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