Breaking the Logarithmic Barrier: Activity-Induced Recovery of Phase Separation Dynamics in Confined Geometry

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to explore how activity influences phase separation in confined porous media, revealing that activity can restore coarsening dynamics and alter interface morphology.

Contribution

It demonstrates that activity can break confinement-induced scaling laws and transition the coarsening process from logarithmic to ballistic growth in complex geometries.

Findings

Confinement induces a crossover to logarithmic coarsening and rough interfaces.

Self-propulsion restores smooth interfaces and changes growth dynamics.

Activity enables phase separation in geometrically restricted environments.

Abstract

Phase separation in confined environments is a fundamental process underlying geological flows, porous filtration, emulsions, and intracellular organization. Yet, how confinement and activity jointly govern coarsening kinetics and interfacial morphology remains poorly understood. Here, we use large-scale molecular dynamics simulations to investigate vapor-liquid phase separation of passive and active fluids embedded in complex porous media. By generating porous host structures via a freeze-quench protocol, we systematically control the average pore size and demonstrate that confinement induces a crossover from the Lifshitz-Slyozov power-law growth to logarithmically slowed coarsening, ultimately arresting domain evolution. Analysis of correlation functions and structure factors reveals that confined passive systems exhibit fractal interfaces, violating Porod's law and indicating rough morphological arrest. In contrast, introducing self-propulsion dramatically changes the coarsening pathway: activity restores smooth interfaces, breaks the confinement-induced scaling laws, and drives a transition from logarithmic to ballistic domain growth at high activity levels. Our findings reveal an activity-controlled mechanism to overcome geometric restrictions and unlock coarsening in structurally heterogeneous environments. These insights establish a unifying framework for nonequilibrium phase transitions in porous settings, with broad relevance to active colloids, catalytic media, and biologically crowded systems, where living matter routinely reorganizes within geometric constraints to sustain function.