Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in model bacterial suspensions

Abstract

Chiral symmetry breaking is ubiquitous in biological systems, from DNA to bacterial suspensions. A key unresolved problem is how chiral structures may spontaneously emerge from achiral interactions. We study a simple model of bacterial suspensions in three dimensions that effectively incorporates active motion and hydrodynamic interactions. We perform large-scale molecular dynamics simulations (up to $10^6$ particles) and describe stable (or long-lived metastable) collective states that exhibit chiral organization although the interactions are achiral. We elucidate under which conditions these chiral states will emerge and grow to large scales. We also study a related equilibrium model that clarifies the role of orientational fluctuations.

References in corpus (9)

• Novel type of phase transition in a system of self-driven particles
• Interaction Ruling Animal Collective Behaviour Depends on Topological rather than Metric Distance: Evidence from a Field Study
• Meso-scale turbulence in living fluids
• Fluid dynamics and noise in bacterial cell-cell and cell-surface scattering
• Non-equilibrium clustering of self-propelled rods
• Fluid Flows Created by Swimming Bacteria Drive Self-Organization in Confined Suspensions
• Minimal model for active nematics: quasi-long-range order and giant fluctuations
• Noise-Induced Transition from Translational to Rotational Motion of Swarms
• A mean-field theory for self-propelled particles interacting by velocity alignment mechanisms

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Active Particles in Complex and Crowded Environments
• Self-Propelled Rods: Insights and Perspectives for Active Matter
• $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric slowing-down of decoherence
• Effective interactions between inclusions in an active bath
• Emergence of collective dynamical chirality for achiral active particles
• Spontaneous Chiral Symmetry Breaking in a Random Driven Chemical System
• Tailoring collective motion of kinesin-driven microtubules via topographic landscapes
• Confinement-induced alternating interactions between inclusions in an active fluid
• Spontaneous symmetry breaking due to the trade-off between attractive and repulsive couplings
• Deriving hydrodynamic equations from dry active matter models in three dimensions
• Vortex formation in the Vicsek model with internal chirality of self-propelling objects