English

Motile dissenters disrupt the flocking of active granular matter

Soft Condensed Matter 2020-06-16 v1

Abstract

We report flocking in the dry active granular matter of millimeter-sized two-step-tapered rods without an intervening medium. The system undergoes the flocking phase transition at a threshold area fraction ~ 0.12 having high orientational correlations between the particles. However, the one-step-tapered rods do not flock and are used as the motile dissenters in the flock-forming granular matter. At the critical fraction of dissenters ~ 0.3, the flocking order of the system gets completely destroyed. The variance of the system's order parameter shows a maximum near the dissenter fraction f ~ 0.05, suggesting a finite-size crossover between the ordered and disordered phases.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2002.06950,
  title  = {Motile dissenters disrupt the flocking of active granular matter},
  author = {Pradip K. Bera and A. K. Sood},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.06950},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

11 pages, 4 figures