Active phase separation in mixtures of chemically interacting particles

Abstract

We theoretically study mixtures of chemically-interacting particles, which produce or consume a chemical to which they are attracted or repelled, in the most general case of many coexisting species. We find a new class of active phase separation phenomena in which the nonequilibrium chemical interactions between particles, which break action-reaction symmetry, can lead to separation into phases with distinct density and stoichiometry. Due to the generic nature of our minimal model, our results shed light on the underlying fundamental principles behind nonequilibrium self-organization of cells and bacteria, catalytic enzymes, or phoretic colloids.

Main Text (5 pages, 3 figures) plus Supplemental Material (8 pages, 4 figures). The associated movies 1-12 can be found at http://www.ds.mpg.de/LMP/arxiv190109022

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• Novel type of phase transition in a system of self-driven particles
• Motility-Induced Phase Separation
• Dynamic clustering and chemotactic collapse of self-phoretic active particles
• Phoresis and Enhanced Diffusion Compete in Enzyme Chemotaxis
• Self-assembly of Active Colloidal Molecules with Dynamic Function

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