English

Flocking turbulence of microswimmers in confined domains

Fluid Dynamics 2023-06-02 v1

Abstract

We extensively study the Toner-Tu-Swift-Hohenberg model of motile active matter by means of direct numerical simulations in a two-dimensional confined domain. By exploring the space of parameters of the model we investigate the emergence of a new state of active turbulence which occurs when the aligning interactions and the self-propulsion of the swimmers are strong. This regime of flocking turbulence is characterized by a population of few strong vortices, each surrounded by an island of coherent flocking motion. The energy spectrum of flocking turbulence displays a power-law scaling with an exponent which depends weakly on the model parameters. By increasing the confinement we observe that flocking turbulence becomes unstable: after a long transient, characterized by power-law distributed transition times, the system switches to the ordered state of a single giant vortex

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.11008,
  title  = {Flocking turbulence of microswimmers in confined domains},
  author = {Leonardo Puggioni and Guido Boffetta and Stefano Musacchio},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.11008},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

12 pages, 12 figures