English

Active phase separation in mixtures of chemically interacting particles

Soft Condensed Matter 2019-07-15 v3 Biological Physics Chemical Physics

Abstract

We theoretically study mixtures of chemically-interacting particles, which produce or consume a chemical to which they are attracted or repelled, in the most general case of many coexisting species. We find a new class of active phase separation phenomena in which the nonequilibrium chemical interactions between particles, which break action-reaction symmetry, can lead to separation into phases with distinct density and stoichiometry. Due to the generic nature of our minimal model, our results shed light on the underlying fundamental principles behind nonequilibrium self-organization of cells and bacteria, catalytic enzymes, or phoretic colloids.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.09022,
  title  = {Active phase separation in mixtures of chemically interacting particles},
  author = {Jaime Agudo-Canalejo and Ramin Golestanian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.09022},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

Main Text (5 pages, 3 figures) plus Supplemental Material (8 pages, 4 figures). The associated movies 1-12 can be found at http://www.ds.mpg.de/LMP/arxiv190109022

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:22:32.967Z