论文标题
不均匀活性凝胶中的主动湍流和自发相分离
Active turbulence and spontaneous phase separation in inhomogeneous extensile active gels
论文作者
论文摘要
我们报告了不均匀和延伸活性列凝胶流体力学的数值结果。通过模拟耦合的cahn-hilliard,navier-stokes和beris-edwards方程,以进化的活性nematic的组成,流量和定向顺序的演变,我们询问组成变化对于确定其新兴物理学是否很重要。就像在均匀成分的活性凝胶中一样,我们发现增加活性或列表趋势(例如,整体活性物质浓度)会触发各向同性被动阶段与活性硝酸盐之间的过渡。我们表明,组成不均匀性在后一阶段很重要,在该阶段,我们找到了三种可能的动力学制度。首先,我们观察出具有缺陷和涡旋的常规模式:这些模式存在于被动活性过渡。其次,对于较大的活性或在列前相中,我们发现活跃的湍流,如均匀成分的活性凝胶,但组成变化极大。在与不均匀性唯一相关的第三条制度中,发生了大型的列趋势和低活动性,我们观察到自发的微相体分离为主动和被动域。鉴于我们使用的基础自由能中没有明确的解散项,因此我们使用的是显着分离的机制,并且我们基于共同的切线结构提供了理论分析,该分析解释了其存在。我们希望这种制度可以在未来进行实验探测。
We report numerical results for the hydrodynamics of inhomogeneous lyotropic and extensile active nematic gels. By simulating the coupled Cahn-Hilliard, Navier-Stokes, and Beris-Edwards equation for the evolution of the composition, flow and orientational order of an active nematic, we ask whether composition variations are important to determine its emergent physics. As in active gels of uniform composition, we find that increasing either activity or nematic tendency (e.g., overall active matter concentration) triggers a transition between an isotropic passive phase and an active nematic one. We show that composition inhomogeneities are important in the latter phase, where we find three types of possible dynamical regimes. First, we observe regular patterns with defects and vortices: these exist close to the passive-active transition. Second, for larger activity, or deeper in the nematic phase, we find active turbulence, as in active gels of uniform composition, but with exceedingly large composition variation. In the third regime, which is uniquely associated with inhomogeneity and occurs for large nematic tendency and low activity, we observe spontaneous microphase separation into active and passive domains. The microphase separated regime is notable in view of the absence of an explicit demixing term in the underlying free energy which we use, and we provide a theoretical analysis based on the common tangent construction which explains its existence. We hope this regime can be probed experimentally in the future.