Coarsening Dynamics of Binary Liquids with Active Rotation

Scientific Achievement

We discovered new types of collective excitations such as self-propelled vortex doublets within mixtures of actively rotating fluids.

 

Significance and Impact

Our results highlight opportunities for achieving life-like, dissipative structures in active materials subject to distributed actuation.

Research Details

• We developed a continuum, hydrodynamic model that describes the phase separation of actively rotating fluids.
• We observed and explained new dynamical behaviors such as active coarsening via self-generated flows as well as the emergence of self-propelled vortex doublets.
• We confirmed that many of the qualitative behaviors identified by the continuum model can also be found in particle-based simulations of actively rotating liquids.

 

Coarsening Dynamics of Binary Liquids With Active Rotation
Sabrina, S., Spellings, M., Glotzer, S.C., Bishop, K.J.M.
Soft Matter 11, 2015, 8409.

Work performed at University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and Pennsylvania State University