Cage Length Controls the Non-Monotonic Dynamics of Active Glassy Matter

TL;DR

This paper reveals that the non-monotonic glassy dynamics in dense active matter systems are governed by the ratio of the cage length to the short-time length scale, unifying previously conflicting observations.

Contribution

It identifies the cage length as a key control parameter and explains the non-monotonic behavior of active glassy matter through a simple physical argument.

Findings

Optimal dynamics occur when cage length matches the short-time length scale.

The study applies to both thermal and athermal active particles.

Reconciles previous conflicting reports on active glassy dynamics.

Abstract

Dense active matter is gaining widespread interest due to its remarkable similarity with conventional glass-forming materials. However, active matter is inherently out-of-equilibrium and even simple models such as active Brownian particles (ABPs) and active Ornstein-Uhlenbeck particles (AOUPs) behave markedly differently from their passive counterparts. Controversially, this difference has been shown to manifest itself via either a speedup, slowdown, or non-monotonic change of the glassy relaxation dynamics. Here we rationalize these seemingly contrasting views on the departure from equilibrium by identifying the ratio of the short-time length scale to the cage length, i.e. the length scale of local particle caging, as a vital and unifying control parameter for active glassy matter. In particular, we explore the glassy dynamics of both thermal and athermal ABPs and AOUPs upon increasing the persistence time. We find that for all studied systems there is an optimum of the dynamics; this optimum occurs when the cage length coincides with the corresponding short-time length scale of the system, which is either the persistence length for athermal systems or a combination of the persistence length and a diffusive length scale for thermal systems. This new insight, for which we also provide a simple physical argument, allows us to reconcile and explain the manifestly disparate departures from equilibrium reported in many previous studies of dense active materials.