arXiv subjects

Sagarika Adhikary

Publications and source records attributed to Sagarika Adhikary.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Inferring activity from fluid flow in continuum models of active matter

Active matter systems are driven out of thermodynamic equilibrium by localized, microscale energy dissipation. While hydrodynamic continuum frameworks are highly successful at simulating these non-equilibrium phenomena (the forward problem), characterizing real-world active materials is fundamentally bottlenecked by the difficulty of measuring active stresses directly. This paper addresses the inverse problem using deep learning: model inference and model selection from observable flow field data of active fluids. We formulate a generalized hydrodynamic inversion framework applied to two cornerstone paradigms of active continuum physics: Active Model H (representing scalar active matter) and Active Nematics (representing active systems with orientational order). We demonstrate that the kinetic energy spectrum obtained from the fluid flow fields preserve a high-fidelity signature of activity to infer parameters of active model H and active nematics. Our deep learning method presents a principled way to bear upon questions of model inference and selection given the flow field data in continuum models of active matter.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2026

Emergent flocking dynamics in chemorepulsive active colloids: interplay of disorder and noise

Recent studies of active colloidal matter have revealed that a global polar order can arise from chemorepulsive interactions among particles without any explicit alignment interaction between them. In this work, we investigate such chemically interacting active colloids in the presence of quenched disorder, where a fraction of particles are randomly pinned in space. These pinned particles are restricted to rotational motion while remaining chemically coupled to the mobile population. In addition, angular noise is incorporated into the rotational dynamics to capture stochastic effects. To elucidate the interplay of quenched disorder and noise, we construct phase diagrams based on polar order and its fluctuations, and systematically analyze the associated disorder- and noise-driven phase transitions. Surprisingly, we find that the phase transition driven by the noise is significantly dependent on the density of the particles, whereas such a density-dependence is not present when the control parameter is the pinning fraction. The finite-size effects on these transitions are also examined. An effective interaction range, governed by the coefficient related to screening of the chemorepulsive interaction, plays a crucial role in collective behavior. When the effective interaction range is much smaller than the system size, the system exhibits density band formation, a feature absent in the long-range interaction regime. Moreover, near the transition point, the order parameter distribution becomes bimodal for the case of short-range interaction.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2026

Flocking transition in phoretically interacting active particles with pinning disorder

Recent studies in the collective behavior of active colloids have shown that a global polar order may emerge due to long-ranged chemo-repulsive interactions between them. Here, we report the role of pinning disorder in the flocking transition for such a system. To this end, we study the problem of chemically interacting active colloids with some fraction of the colloids randomly pinned over space such that they can only rotate while phoretically interacting with other particles. Using this model, we investigate the sustenance of global polar order in the presence of quenched spatial disorder. We quantify the flocking transition by studying the global polarization, and the role of finite-size effects. We find that in the crystallite flocking phase, even a small fraction of pinning can destroy spatial crystalline order, although polar order in the form of a liquid phase is maintained. It is observed that polar order is sustained in a system with a higher pinning fraction if the long-ranged repulsive force is subsequently increased. However, in absence of chemo-repulsive forces between particles, polar order drastically decreases even with a smaller pinning fraction. Our work suggests that the flocking transition of active colloids can be controlled via "translationally inert" obstacles, that rotate but do not translate whilst interacting with the bulk.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2025

Minimal mechanism for flocking in phoretically interacting active particles

Coherent collective motion is a widely observed phenomenon in active matter systems. Here, we report a flocking transition mechanism in a system of chemically interacting active colloidal particles sustained purely by chemo-repulsive torques at low to medium densities. The basic requirements to maintain the global polar order are excluded volume repulsions and long-ranged repulsive torques. This mechanism requires that the time scale individual colloids move a unit length to be dominant with respect to the time they deterministically respond to chemical gradients, or equivalently, pair colloids sliding together a minimal unit length before deterministically rotating away from each other. Switching on the translational repulsive forces renders the flock a crystalline structure. Furthermore, liquid flocks are observed for a range of chemo-attractive inter-particle forces. Various properties of these two distinct flocking phases are contrasted and discussed. We complement these results with stability analysis of a hydrodynamic model, which admits the transition corresponding to destabilization of the flocking state observed in particle-based simulations.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2023

Collective dynamics and phase transition of active matter in presence of orientation adapters

In this work, the orientation adapter, a species of active particles that adapt their direction of motion from the other active particles, is introduced. The orientation adapters exist besides the usual Vicsek-like particles; both are self-driven, however, follow different interaction rules. We have studied the dynamics in high speed of the particles keeping dissimilar speeds for these different species. The effect of orientation adapters on the collective behaviour of the system is explored in this model. The orientational order-disorder phase transition is mainly studied in such systems. First, for equal density of both species, when the adapter speed $v_a=1.2v_0$ and usual particles speed $v_0=1.0$, both adapters and the usual particles form dense travelling bands and move in the same direction. Near the transition point, such bands appear and disappear over time, giving rise to the co-existence of two phases. The adapters and the usual particles both undergo a discontinuous transition. The nature of the transition is further confirmed by the existence of hysteresis in the order parameter under a continuously varying noise field. However, when the adapter velocity becomes much higher than the usual SPPs $v_a \approx 7v_0$, the formation of travelling bands disappears from the system, and the transition becomes continuous. The density ratio is also varied, keeping the velocities constant, and the phase transition is studied. For a high adapter velocity with $v_a=10v_0$, the continuous transition is found with low-density values of the adapters. The critical exponents related to the continuous transition are also determined.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2022

Pattern formation and phase transition in the collective dynamics of a binary mixture of polar self-propelled particles

The collective behavior of a binary mixture of polar self-propelled particles (SPPs) with different motile properties is studied. The binary mixture consists of slow-moving SPPs (sSPPs) of fixed velocity $v_s$ and fast-moving SPPs (fSPPs) of fixed velocity $v_f$. These SPPs interact via a short-range interaction irrespective of their types. They move following certain position and velocity update rules similar to the Vicsek model (VM) under the influence of an external noise $η$. The system is studied at different values of $v_f$ keeping $v_s=0.01$ constant for a fixed density $ρ=0.5$. Different phase-separated collective patterns that appear in the system over a wide range of noise $η$ are characterized. The fSPPs and the sSPPs are found to be orientationally phase-synchronized at the steady-state. We studied an orientational order-disorder transition varying the angular noise $η$ and identified the critical noise $η_c$ for different $v_f$. Interestingly, both the species exhibit continuous transition for $v_f<100v_s$, and discontinuous transition for $v_f>100v_s$. A new set of critical exponents is determined for the continuous transitions. However, the binary model is found to be non-universal as the values of the critical exponents depend on the velocity. The effect of interaction radius on the system behavior is also studied.

cond-mat.soft↗