Domain Growth in the Active Model B: Critical and Off-critical Composition

TL;DR

This paper investigates the domain growth kinetics and dynamical scaling in the Active Model B, revealing novel growth laws and the influence of activity and noise on phase separation in active Brownian particles.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of domain growth laws in Active Model B, including the effects of activity sign and noise, extending understanding of phase separation in active matter.

Findings

Negative P yields Lifshitz-Slyozov growth law ($t^{1/3}$).

Positive P results in a new growth law ($t^{1/4}$).

Correlation functions exhibit dynamical scaling with dependencies.

Abstract

We study the ordering kinetics of an assembly of {\it active Brownian particles} (ABPs) on a two-dimensional substrate. We use a coarse-grained equation for the composition order parameter $\psi ({\bf r},t)$, where ${\bf r}$ and $t$ denote space and time, respectively. The model is similar to the {\it Cahn-Hilliard equation} or {\it Model B} (MB) for a conserved order parameter with an additional activity term of strength $\lambda$. This model has been introduced by Wittkowski et al., Nature Comm. {\bf 5}, 4351 (2014), and is termed {\it Active Model B} (AMB). We study domain growth kinetics and dynamical scaling of the correlation function for the AMB with critical and off-critical compositions. The quantity $P = \mbox{sign}(\lambda \times \psi_0)$ governs the asymptotic growth kinetics for the off-critical AMB, where $\psi_0$ denotes the average order parameter. For negative $P$, the domain growth law is the usual Lifshitz-Slyozov growth law with $L(t,\lambda) \sim t^{1/3}$. For positive $P$, the growth law shows a crossover to a novel growth law $L(t,\lambda) \sim t^{1/4}$. Further, the correlation function shows good dynamical scaling for the off-critical AMB but the scaling function has a dependency on $\psi_0$ and $\lambda$. We also study the effects of both additive and multiplicative noise on the AMB.