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arXiv · 2308.08657

Maximally mixing active nematics

Kevin A. Mitchell·Md Mainul Hasan Sabbir·Kevin Geumhan·Spencer A. Smith·Brandon Klein·Daniel A. Beller
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Abstract

Active nematics are an important new paradigm in soft condensed matter systems. They consist of rod-like components with an internal driving force pushing them out of equilibrium. The resulting fluid motion exhibits chaotic advection, in which a small patch of fluid is stretched exponentially in length. Using simulation, this Letter shows that this system can exhibit stable periodic motion when sufficiently confined to a square with periodic boundary conditions. Moreover, employing tools from braid theory, we show that this motion is maximally mixing, in that it optimizes the (dimensionless) ``topological entropy'' -- the exponential stretching rate of a material line advected by the fluid. That is, this periodic motion of the defects, counterintuitively, produces more chaotic mixing than chaotic motion of the defects. We also explore the stability of the periodic state. Importantly, we show how to stabilize this orbit into a larger periodic tiling, a critical necessity for it to be seen in future experiments.

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Kevin A. Mitchell, Md Mainul Hasan Sabbir, Kevin Geumhan, Spencer A. Smith, Brandon Klein, Daniel A. Beller. 2023-08-16. Maximally mixing active nematics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.08657

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