Phase Separation, Capillarity, and Odd Surface Flows in Chiral Active Matter

Abstract

Active phase separations evade canonical thermodynamic descriptions and have thus challenged our understanding of coexistence and interfacial phenomena. Considerable progress has been made towards a non-equilibrium theoretical description of these traditionally thermodynamic concepts. Spatial parity symmetry is conspicuously assumed in much of this progress, despite the ubiquity of chirality in experimentally realized systems. In this Letter, we derive a theory for the phase coexistence and interfacial fluctuations of a system which microscopically violates spatial parity. We find suppression of the phase separation as chirality is increased as well as the development of steady-state currents tangential to the interface dividing the phases. These odd flows are irrelevant to stationary interfacial properties, with stability, capillary fluctuations, and surface area minimization determined entirely by the capillary surface tension. Using large-scale Brownian dynamics simulations, we find excellent agreement with our theoretical scaling predictions.

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Hyperuniform interfaces in non-equilibrium phase coexistence
• The Mechanics of Nucleation and Growth and the Surface Tensions of Active Matter
• Theory of Nonequilibrium Coexistence with Coupled Conserved and Nonconserved Order Parameters
• Conservation laws and slow dynamics determine the universality class of interfaces in active matter