Critical behavior of quorum-sensing active particles

TL;DR

This paper investigates the critical behavior of quorum sensing active particles, confirming through simulations that they exhibit phase separation with critical exponents matching the Ising universality class.

Contribution

It provides the first numerical confirmation that quorum sensing active particles belong to the Ising universality class at criticality.

Findings

Confirmed phase separation in quorum sensing active particles.

Located the critical point of the system.

Critical exponents match the Ising universality class.

Abstract

It is still a debated issue whether all critical active particles belong to the same universality class. Here we numerically study the critical behavior of quorum sensing active particles that represents the archetypal model for interpreting motility-induced phase separation. Mean-field theory predicts that this model should undergo a full phase separation if particles slow-down enough when sensing the presence of their neighbours and that the coexistence line terminates in a critical point. By performing large-scale numerical simulations we confirm this scenario, locate the critical point and use finite-size scaling analysis to show that the static and dynamic critical exponents of this active system agree with the Ising universality class