Issue |
EPL
Volume 99, Number 5, September 2012
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 58001 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/99/58001 | |
Published online | 05 September 2012 |
Soft deformable self-propelled particles
1 Institut für Theoretische Physik II: Weiche Materie, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Universitätsstraße 1, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany, EU
2 Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University - Kyoto 606-8502, Japan
(a) menzel@thphy.uni-duesseldorf.de
Received: 20 June 2012
Accepted: 31 July 2012
In this work we investigate the collective behavior of self-propelled particles that deform due to local pairwise interactions. We demonstrate that this deformation alone can induce alignment of the velocity vectors. The onset of collective motion is analyzed. Applying a Gaussian-core repulsion between the particles, we find a transition to disordered non-collective motion under compression. We here explain that this reflects the reentrant fluid behavior of the general Gaussian-core model now applied to a self-propelled system. Truncating the Gaussian potential can lead to cluster crystallization or more disordered cluster states. For intermediate values of the Gaussian-core potential we observe for the first time laning for deformable self-propelled particles. Finally, without the core potential, but including orientational noise, we connect our description to the Vicsek approach for self-propelled particles with nematic alignment interactions.
PACS: 87.18.Gh – Cell-cell communication; collective behavior of motile cells / 64.60.Cn – Order-disorder transformations / 64.70.D- – Solid-liquid transitions
© EPLA, 2012
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