active spinner materials
This page contains supporting movies for the paper Spatiotemporal order and emergent edge currents in active spinner materials by Benjamin C. van Zuiden, Jayson Paulose, William T. M. Irvine, Denis Bartolo, and Vincenzo Vitelli. We study collections of repulsive dimer particles driven to rotate by torques applied to each dimer. Just as the competition between potential energy and thermal fluctuations gives rise to equilibrium states of matter, the interplay between rotational drive and interactions in the system of active spinners gives rise to a variety of unusual nonequilibrium steady states, ranging from crystals ordered in time and space, to liquids with robust edge currents, to jammed states.
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Supplementary Movie 1
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The video shows the steady state for simulations of 768 spinning dimers under periodic boundary conditions (left) and confined to a disc (right). Three sequences are shown, corresponding to three densities: crystal, liquid, and jammed. The states exhibit collective flows under confinement. Red arrows show dimer velocities (scaled differently for the different densities). |
Supplementary Movie 2
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The video shows the orientation dynamics of dimers in active spinner crystals at two densities, corresponding to two unique crystals with distinct phase-locked patterns. At lower densities, neighbouring dimers are always π/3 out of phase, which we term the AFM phase; at higher densities, dimers are in phase with neighbours along one crystal axis and π/2 out of phase with neighbours along the other two axes (H phase). Under periodic boundary conditions, dimers self-assemble in to polycrystals with domains separated by grain boundaries which perturb the perfect phase-locking pattern. |
Supplementary Movie 3
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Orientation dynamics of dimers at the same densities as in Movie 2, but at smaller system sizes (144 dimers) pre-positioned into a monocrystal within a commensurate rectangular box. In the absence of crystal defects and grain boundaries, the monocrystals exhibit spatiotemporal order with orientations phase-locked into the perfect AFM and H patterns at low and high densities respectively. |