Nucleation pathway and kinetics of phase-separating active Brownian particles

Abstract

Suspensions of purely repulsive but self-propelled Brownian particles might undergo phase separation, a phenomenon that strongly resembles the phase separation of passive particles with attractions. Here we employ computer simulations to study the nucleation kinetics and the microscopic pathway active Brownian disks take in two dimensions when quenched from the homogeneous suspension to propulsion speeds beyond the binodal. We find the same qualitative behavior for the nucleation rate as a function of density as for a passive suspension undergoing liquid-vapor separation, suggesting that the scenario of an effective free energy also extends to the kinetics of phase separation. We study the transition in more detail through a committor analysis and find that transition states are best described by a combination of cluster size and the radial polarization of particles in the cluster.

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• Forward Flux Sampling Calculation of Homogeneous Nucleation Rates from Aqueous NaCl Solutions
• Phase behavior of active Brownian disks, spheres, and dumbbells
• Forward-Flux Sampling with Jumpy Order Parameters
• Active phase separation: new phenomenology from non-equilibrium physics
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• Three-body correlations and conditional forces in suspensions of active hard disks
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• Statistical properties of microphase and bubbly phase-separated active fluids
• Evaluation of transition rates from nonequilibrium instantons
• Effective dynamics and fluctuations of a trapped probe moving in a fluid of active hard discs
• The Mechanics of Nucleation and Growth and the Surface Tensions of Active Matter
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• When does an active bath behave as an equilibrium one?
• Conservation laws and slow dynamics determine the universality class of interfaces in active matter
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• Non-equilibrium pathways between cluster morphologies in active phase separation: necking, rupture and cavitation