Flocking turbulence of microswimmers in confined domains

Abstract

We extensively study the Toner-Tu-Swift-Hohenberg model of motile active matter by means of direct numerical simulations in a two-dimensional confined domain. By exploring the space of parameters of the model we investigate the emergence of a new state of active turbulence which occurs when the aligning interactions and the self-propulsion of the swimmers are strong. This regime of flocking turbulence is characterized by a population of few strong vortices, each surrounded by an island of coherent flocking motion. The energy spectrum of flocking turbulence displays a power-law scaling with an exponent which depends weakly on the model parameters. By increasing the confinement we observe that flocking turbulence becomes unstable: after a long transient, characterized by power-law distributed transition times, the system switches to the ordered state of a single giant vortex

12 pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (16)

• 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
• Spontaneous motion in hierarchically assembled active matter
• Meso-scale turbulence in living fluids
• Collective motion of self-propelled particles interacting without cohesion
• Fluid Flows Created by Swimming Bacteria Drive Self-Organization in Confined Suspensions
• Active Turbulence
• Minimal continuum theories of structure formation in dense active fluids
• Critical Phenomenon of the Order-Disorder Transition in Incompressible Flocks
• Anomalous diffusion and Lévy walks distinguish active from inertial turbulence
• Intermittency, fluctuations and maximal chaos in an emergent universal state of active turbulence
• Giant vortex dynamics in confined active turbulence
• Lagrangian Manifestation of Anomalies in Active Turbulence
• Hydrodynamic theory of two-dimensional incompressible polar active fluids with quenched and annealed disorder
• Phase ordering, topological defects, and turbulence in the 3D incompressible Toner-Tu equation
• Optimal Turbulent Transport in Microswimmer Suspensions

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Emergence of Local Ordering and Mesoscale Giant Number Fluctuations in Active Turbulence
• Oscillating edge current in polar active fluid
• Hydrodynamic stability and pattern formation in hexatic epithelial layers