Nonequilibrium phase behaviour from minimization of free power dissipation

Abstract

We develop a general theory for describing phase coexistence between nonequilibrium steady states in Brownian systems, based on power functional theory (M. Schmidt and J.M. Brader, J. Chem. Phys. 138, 214101 (2013)). We apply the framework to the special case of fluid-fluid phase separation of active soft sphere swimmers. The central object of the theory, the dissipated free power, is calculated via computer simulations and compared to a simple analytical approximation. The theory describes well the simulation data and predicts motility-induced phase separation due to avoidance of dissipative clusters.

References in corpus (4)

• Motility-Induced Phase Separation
• Pressure and Phase Equilibria in Interacting Active Brownian Spheres
• Effective Interactions in Active Brownian Suspensions
• Superadiabatic forces in Brownian many-body dynamics

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Inertial effects of self-propelled particles: from active Brownian to active Langevin motion
• Non-negative Interfacial Tension in Phase-Separated Active Brownian Particles
• Phase coexistence of active Brownian particles
• Phase separation of active Brownian particles in two dimensions: Anything for a quiet life
• Universality in Driven and Equilibrium Hard Sphere Liquid Dynamics
• Dynamic Decay and Superadiabatic Forces in the van Hove Dynamics of Bulk Hard Sphere Fluids