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Active matter in crowded environments

By: Cristóvão Dias
From: CFTC - FCUL - ULisboa
At: C1, 1.4.14
[2021-10-14] 11:00

Exotic collective behavior emerges from the dynamics of activeparticles in disordered environments. The presence of fixed randomobstacles can show optimal transport and search behaviors as afunction of persistent length, for run-and-tumble or chiral activeparticles. Here, we combine experiments at different length scales andnumerical simulations to study the dynamics of active particles in acrowded environment of mobile passive particles. We find that activeparticles form long-living channels and re-use them, leading to anincrease in mobility. A systematic study shows that the key mechanismresponsible for such a phenomenon is the impact of theparticle-particle interaction in the rotational degrees of freedom.The study of attractive Janus particles elucidates on how theformation and re-use of channels affects the aggregation dynamics.