Macroscopic active matter under confinement: dynamical heterogeneity, bursts, and glassy behavior in a few-body system of self-propelling camphor surfers

TL;DR

This study investigates the complex collective dynamics of a few self-propelling camphor surfers confined in a circular boundary, revealing phenomena like dynamical slowing down, bursting activity, and glassy behavior influenced by inertia and an intermediate length scale.

Contribution

The paper introduces a minimal inertial active-particle model capturing the emergence of glassy dynamics and bursting phenomena in a confined active matter system with a new critical length scale.

Findings

Dynamical slowing down with increasing particle density.

Decreased amplitude and frequency of bursts at higher densities.

Model reproduces glass-like states and highlights the role of an intermediate length scale.

Abstract

We study a few-body system composed of self-propelling camphor surfers confined within a circular boundary. These millimeter-sized particles move in a regime where inertia and long-ranged interactions play a significant role, leading to surprisingly complex and subtle collective dynamics. These dynamics include self-organized bursts and glassy behavior at intermediate densities--phenomena not apparent from ensemble-averaged steady-state measures. By analyzing quantities like the overlap order parameter, we observe that the system exhibits dynamical slowing down as particle density increases. This slowdown is also reflected in the bursting activity, where both the amplitude and frequency of bursts decrease with increasing particle density. A minimal inertial active-particle model reproduces these dynamical steady states, revealing the importance of a new intermediate length scale--larger than the particle size. This intermediate scale is critical for the formation of structures resembling caging and plays a key role in the glass-like transition. Our results describe a macroscopic analog of an active glass with the additional phenomena of density-dependent bursting.