Jacucci, Gianni;
Breoni, Davide;
Heijnen, Sandrine;
Palomo, José;
Jones, Philip;
Löwen, Hartmut;
Volpe, Giorgio;
(2024)
Patchy energy landscapes promote stability of small groups of active particles.
Communications Physics
, 7
(1)
, Article 245. 10.1038/s42005-024-01738-y.
Preview |
Text
s42005-024-01738-y.pdf - Published Version Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Group formation and coordination are fundamental characteristics of living matter, essential for performing tasks and ensuring survival. Interactions between individuals play a key role in group formation, and the impact of resource distributions is a vibrant area of research. As of now, an understanding of how patchy resource distributions determine group dynamics is not yet fully understood. Studying active particles in controlled optical landscapes as energy sources, we demonstrate a non-monotonic dependency of group size on landscape patchiness, with the smallest groups forming when the patches match the active particles’ size. A similar relationship is observed in terms of group stability, evidenced by a reduced rate of individual exchange in patchy environments compared to homogeneous conditions. Reduced group sizes can be beneficial to optimise resources in heterogeneous environments and to control information flow within populations. Our results provide insights into the role of patchy landscapes and uneven energy distributions in active matter and hold implications for refining swarm intelligence algorithms, enhancing crowd management techniques, and tailoring colloidal self-assembly.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Patchy energy landscapes promote stability of small groups of active particles |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s42005-024-01738-y |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42005-024-01738-y |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Applied optics, Condensed-matter physics |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Chemistry UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10195125 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
