Active Matter

 
A flock of starlings acting as a swarm

Active matter is composed of large numbers of active "agents", each of which consumes energy in order to move or to exert mechanical forces.[1][2] Due to the energy consumption, these systems are intrinsically out of thermal equilibrium. Examples of active matter are schools of fish, flocks of birds, bacteria, artificial self-propelled particles, and self-organising bio-polymers such as microtubules and actin, both of which are part of the cytoskeleton of living cells. Most examples of active matter are biological in origin; however, a great deal of current experimental work is devoted to synthetic systems. Active matter is a relatively new material classification in soft matter: the most extensively studied model, the Vicsek model, dates from 1995.[3]

Research in active matter combines analytical techniques, numerical simulations and experiments. Notable analytical approaches include hydrodynamics,[4] kinetic theory, and non-equilibrium statistical physics. Numerical studies mainly involve self-propelled-particles models,[5][6] making use of agent-based models such as molecular dynamics algorithms as well as computational studies of hydrodynamic equations of active fluids.[4] Experiments on biological systems extend over a wide range of scales, including animal groups (e.g., bird flocks,[7] mammalian herds, fish schools and insect swarms[8]), bacterial colonies, cellular tissues (e.g. epithelial tissue layers,[9] cancer growth and embryogenesis), cytoskeleton components (e.g., in vitro motility assays, actin-myosin networks and molecular-motor driven filaments[10]). Experiments on synthetic systems include self-propelled colloids (e.g., phoretically propelled particles[11]), driven granular matter (e.g. vibrated monolayers[12]), swarming robots and Quinke rotators.

Concepts in Active matter edit

  • Active gels [13]
    • Dense active matter

Collective motion

Animals who live in groups are inclined to demonstrate coordinated behaviors as well as emergent properties which could incorporate cost-benefit balance, information transmission and decision making process.

Collective cell migration is commonly seen in multicellular organisms whose cells are cohesive to each other and can move in shapes like sheets, strands, and tubes, etc. The environment can largely affect the process of migration and cells can sense their neighbors by adhesion.

 
A group of active agents (blue) acting according to the mean action of neighbors in self-assembly system[14]. All agents can move and attack and will disappear if attacked. Both blue and red agents are trained by reinforcement learning to destroy the foes but the blues agents are trained to consider the mean action of neighbors while the red ones are trained independently. It can be concluded that coordinated action is more efficient.

Self-propelled particles tend to accumulate in areas where they move relatively slowly, while at high density, they may also move more slowly. This mechanism could lead to positive feedback which will cause motility induced phase separation[15].

There are many ways to simulate swarms in natural settings. For example, a very common phenomenon in school of fish, colony of bees is that agents are influenced by the mean action of their neighbors[14]. These micro-interactions between individual group members will at last emerges as a group-level behavior pattern. A simulation of such emergence is shown in the right picture.

Collective motion refers to the emergence of ordered motion in a self-propelled system. Observations has been made in such systems consisting of units ranging from macromolecules through metallic rods and robots to groups of animals and people.

  • Active stress

Active matter systems

There are many current research areas in active matter that are closely related to the biophysics of living cells, micro-tissues, or subcellular processes. For example, the cardiac cells which have typical natural beating along with interaction of adjacent neighboring cells, would demonstrate unique mechanical properties.

Self-propelled particles (SPP) is a broad concept which can refer to items from Active colloidal particles, dubbed nanomotors which are wet-artificial SPP to most animals which find energy from their food and show locomotion strategies. In the modeling of SPP introduced in 1995 by Tamás Vicsek et al[19], the SPP are point particles moving with a constant speed. Simulations have demonstrated that an appropriate "nearest neighbour rule", at low noise, would eventually lead to all the particles moving in the same direction or forming a swarm, no matter how those agents are arranged to each other or whether their neighbors change over time.


References edit

  1. ^ Ramaswamy, Sriram (2010-01-01). "The Mechanics and Statistics of Active Matter". Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics. 1 (1): 323–345. arXiv:1004.1933. Bibcode:2010ARCMP...1..323R. doi:10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-070909-104101.
  2. ^ Marchetti, M. C.; Joanny, J.F.; Ramaswamy, S.; Liverpool, T. B.; Prost, J.; Rao, M.; Adita Simha, R. (2012). "Hydrodynamics of soft active matter". Reviews of Modern Physics. 85 (3): 1143–1189. arXiv:1207.2929. Bibcode:2013RvMP...85.1143M. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.85.1143.
  3. ^ Vicsek, T.; Czirok, A.; Ben-Jacob, E.; Cohen, I.; Shochet, O. (1995). "Novel type of phase transition in a system of self-driven particles". Physical Review Letters. 75 (6): 1226–1229. arXiv:cond-mat/0611743. Bibcode:1995PhRvL..75.1226V. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.75.1226. PMID 10060237.
  4. ^ a b Toner, John; Tu, Yuhai; Ramaswamy, Sriram (2005-07-01). "Hydrodynamics and phases of flocks". Annals of Physics. Special Issue. 318 (1): 170–244. Bibcode:2005AnPhy.318..170T. doi:10.1016/j.aop.2005.04.011.
  5. ^ Vicsek, Tamás; Czirók, András; Ben-Jacob, Eshel; Cohen, Inon; Shochet, Ofer (1995-08-07). "Novel Type of Phase Transition in a System of Self-Driven Particles". Physical Review Letters. 75 (6): 1226–1229. arXiv:cond-mat/0611743. Bibcode:1995PhRvL..75.1226V. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.75.1226. PMID 10060237.
  6. ^ Chaté, Hugues; Ginelli, Francesco; Grégoire, Guillaume; Raynaud, Franck (2008-04-18). "Collective motion of self-propelled particles interacting without cohesion". Physical Review E. 77 (4): 046113. arXiv:0712.2062. Bibcode:2008PhRvE..77d6113C. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.77.046113.
  7. ^ Ballerini, M.; Cabibbo, N.; Candelier, R.; Cavagna, A.; Cisbani, E.; Giardina, I.; Lecomte, V.; Orlandi, A.; Parisi, G. (2008-01-29). "Interaction ruling animal collective behavior depends on topological rather than metric distance: Evidence from a field study". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105 (4): 1232–1237. arXiv:0709.1916. Bibcode:2008PNAS..105.1232B. doi:10.1073/pnas.0711437105. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2234121. PMID 18227508.
  8. ^ Buhl, J.; Sumpter, D. J. T.; Couzin, I. D.; Hale, J. J.; Despland, E.; Miller, E. R.; Simpson, S. J. (2006-06-02). "From Disorder to Order in Marching Locusts". Science. 312 (5778): 1402–1406. Bibcode:2006Sci...312.1402B. doi:10.1126/science.1125142. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 16741126.
  9. ^ Trepat, Xavier; Wasserman, Michael R.; Angelini, Thomas E.; Millet, Emil; Weitz, David A.; Butler, James P.; Fredberg, Jeffrey J. (2009-06-01). "Physical forces during collective cell migration". Nature Physics. 5 (6): 426–430. Bibcode:2009NatPh...5..426T. doi:10.1038/nphys1269. ISSN 1745-2473.
  10. ^ Keber, Felix C.; Loiseau, Etienne; Sanchez, Tim; DeCamp, Stephen J.; Giomi, Luca; Bowick, Mark J.; Marchetti, M. Cristina; Dogic, Zvonimir; Bausch, Andreas R. (2014-09-05). "Topology and dynamics of active nematic vesicles". Science. 345 (6201): 1135–1139. arXiv:1409.1836. Bibcode:2014Sci...345.1135K. doi:10.1126/science.1254784. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 4401068. PMID 25190790.
  11. ^ Palacci, Jeremie; Sacanna, Stefano; Steinberg, Asher Preska; Pine, David J.; Chaikin, Paul M. (2013-02-22). "Living Crystals of Light-Activated Colloidal Surfers". Science. 339 (6122): 936–940. Bibcode:2013Sci...339..936P. doi:10.1126/science.1230020. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 23371555.
  12. ^ Deseigne, Julien; Dauchot, Olivier; Chaté, Hugues (2010-08-23). "Collective Motion of Vibrated Polar Disks". Physical Review Letters. 105 (9): 098001. arXiv:1004.1499. Bibcode:2010PhRvL.105i8001D. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.098001. PMID 20868196.
  13. ^ Alvarado, José. "Force percolation of contractile active gels". Soft matter.
  14. ^ a b Yaodong, Yang. "Mean Field Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning". 35th International Conference on Machine Learning.
  15. ^ Cates M E, Tailleur J. "Motility-induced phase separation". Condens. Matter Phys.
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  18. ^ B.A. Camley and W.-J. Rappel. "Physical models of collective cell motility: from cell to tissue". J. Phys. D.
  19. ^ Vicsek, T.; Czirok, A.; Ben-Jacob, E.; Cohen, I.; Shochet, O. "Novel type of phase transition in a system of self-driven particles". Physical Review Letters.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)