Non-motile active matter exhibits a wide range of non-equilibrium collective phenomena yet examples are crucially lacking in the literature. We present a microscopic model inspired by the bacteria {\it Neisseria Meningitidis} in which diffusive agents feel intermittent attractive forces. Through a formal coarse-graining procedure, we show that this truly scalar model of active matter exhibits the time-reversal-symmetry breaking terms defining the {\it Active Model B+} class. In particular, we confirm the presence of microphase separation by solving the kinetic equations numerically. We show that the switching rate controlling the interactions provides a regulation mechanism tuning the typical cluster size, e.g. in populations of bacteria interacting via type IV pili.
@article{arxiv.2201.04091,
title = {Intermittent Attractive Interactions Lead to Microphase Separation in Non-motile Active Matter},
author = {Henry Alston and Andrew O. Parry and Raphaël Voituriez and Thibault Bertrand},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.04091},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
7 pages (4 figures) of main text plus 12 pages (2 figures) of supplementary information