Related papers: Cage Breaking Far from Equilibrium
The dynamics of an active walker in a harmonic potential is studied experimentally, numerically and theoretically. At odds with usual models of self-propelled particles, we identify two dynamical states for which the particle condensates at…
One of the paradigms of a small quantum system in a dissipative environment is the decay of an excited atom undergoing spontaneous photon emission into the fluctuating quantum electrodynamic vacuum. Recent experiments have demonstrated that…
In recent work, Baez, Fong and the author introduced a framework for describing Markov processes equipped with a detailed balanced equilibrium as open systems of a certain type. These `open Markov processes' serve as the building blocks for…
Most natural thermodynamic systems operate far from equilibrium, developing persistent currents and organizing into non-equilibrium stationary states (NESSs). Yet, the principles by which such systems self-organize, breaking equilibrium…
Immotile microbes inhabit nearly every environment on Earth, from soils and sediments to food matrices -- yet how they disperse through these physically confining environments is poorly understood. Here, we show that immotile microbial…
Extreme active matter, an assembly of self-propelled particles with large persistence time $\tau_p$ and high P\'eclet number, exhibits remarkable behaviour at high densities. As $\tau_p\to 0$, the assembly undergoes a gradual slowing down…
Active matter systems are driven out of thermal equilibrium by a lack of generalized Stokes-Einstein relation between injection and dissipation of energy at the microscopic scale. We consider such a system of interacting particles,…
Dynamics is central to living systems. In the last two decades, experiments have revealed that the dynamics in diverse biological systems - from intracellular cytoplasm to cellular and organismal aggregates - are remarkably similar to that…
We examine the density-density correlation function in a model recently proposed to study the effect of entropy barriers in glassy dynamics. We find that the relaxation proceeds in two steps with a fast beta process followed by alpha…
A recent experiment [Son et al., Soft Matter, 2024, 20,2777-2788] showed that self-propelled particles confined within a circular boundary filled with granular medium spontaneously form a motile cluster that stays on the boundary. This…
In a recent publication we established an analogy between the free energy of a hard sphere system and the energy of an elastic network [1]. This result enables one to study the free energy landscape of hard spheres, in particular to define…
The non-equilibrium dynamics of a one-dimensional Ising model with uniform, short-ranged three-spin interactions is investigated. It is shown that this model possesses an exponentially large number of metastable configurations that are…
Energy landscapes are high-dimensional surfaces representing the dependence of system energy on variable configurations, which determine crucially the system's emergent behavior but are difficult to be analyzed due to their high-dimensional…
To elucidate slow dynamics in glassy materials, we introduce the {\it Figure-8 model} in which $N$ hard blocks undergo Brownian motion around a circuit in the shape of a figure-8. This system undergoes kinetic arrest at a critical packing…
One characteristic feature of soft matter systems is their strong response to external stimuli. As a consequence they are comparatively easily driven out of their ground state and out of equilibrium, which leads to many of their fascinating…
Many active systems move in complex environments whose mechanical response is slow and history dependent. To address this regime, we study the collective dynamics of self-sustained active particles in non-Markovian media within a…
Glass-forming materials are characterized by an intermittent motion at the microscopic scale. Particles spend most of their time rattling within the cages formed by their neighbors, and seldom jump to a different cage. In molecular glass…
Dense assemblies of self-propelled particles undergo a nonequilibrium form of glassy dynamics. Physical intuition suggests that increasing departure from equilibrium due to active forces fluidifies a glassy system. We falsify this belief by…
As shown by early studies on mean-field models of the glass transition, the geometrical features of the energy landscape provide fundamental information on the dynamical transition at the Mode-Coupling temperature $T_d$. We show that active…
Living organisms employ diverse strategies to navigate confined environments. Inspired by translocation observations on California blackworms (\textit{Lumbriculus variegatus}), we combine biological experiments and active-polymer…