Non-equilibrium structure and relaxation in active microemulsions

TL;DR

This paper presents an analytical model of active microemulsions to understand how activity influences their structure and relaxation, revealing two distinct dynamic regimes linked to broken detailed balance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel continuum model for active microemulsions that captures the effects of activity on structure and relaxation dynamics.

Findings

Identification of two distinct relaxation regimes

Linking activity to broken detailed balance

Analytical tractability of the proposed model

Abstract

Microphase separation is common in active biological systems as exemplified by the separation of RNA and DNA-rich phases in the cell nucleus driven by the transcriptional activity of polymerase enzymes acting similarly to amphiphiles in a microemulsion. Here we propose an analytically tractable model of an active microemulsion to investigate how the activity affects its structure and relaxation dynamics. Continuum theory derived from a lattice model exhibits two distinct regimes of the relaxation dynamics and is linked to the broken detailed balance due to intermittent activity of the amphiphiles.