Demixing of active particles in the presence of external fields

Abstract

Active systems are inherently out of equilibrium, as they collect energy from their surroundings and transform it into directed motion. A recent theoretical study suggests that binary mixtures of active particles with distinct effective diffusion coefficients exhibit dynamical demixing above a threshold ratio of the diffusion coefficients. Here, we show that this threshold may be reduced drastically in the presence of external fields. We investigate the demixing as a function of the ratio of the diffusion coefficients and discuss the implications of the results for active systems.

References in corpus (5)

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• Activity-induced phase separation and self-assembly in mixtures of active and passive particles
• Small activity differences drive phase separation in active-passive polymer mixtures
• Phases of granular segregation in a binary mixture
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Effective equilibrium states in mixtures of active particles driven by colored noise
• Rectification in a mixture of active and passive particles subject to a ratchet potential
• Colloidal Brazil nut effect in microswimmer mixtures induced by motility contrast
• Pattern formation and phase transition in the collective dynamics of a binary mixture of polar self-propelled particles