Stability and Dynamics of Crystals and Glasses of Motorized Particles

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework to analyze the stability, phase transitions, and fluctuation properties of motorized particle assemblies, modeling cellular structures like the cytoskeleton far from equilibrium.

Contribution

It introduces a variational approach to derive stability criteria and effective temperatures for motorized particle crystals and glasses, advancing understanding of active matter.

Findings

Derived a transition criterion for localization of motorized particles.

Established stability limits for crystalline and amorphous phases.

Estimated nonequilibrium effective temperatures for active structures.

Abstract

Many of the large structures of the cell, such as the cytoskeleton, are assembled and maintained far from equilibrium. We study the stabilities of various structures for a simple model of such a far-from-equilibrium organized assembly in which spherical particles move under the influence of attached motors. From the variational solutions of the manybody master equation for Brownian motion with motorized kicking we obtain a closed equation for the order parameter of localization. Thus we obtain the transition criterion for localization and stability limits for the crystalline phase and frozen amorphous structures of motorized particles. The theory also allows an estimate of nonequilibrium effective temperatures characterizing the response and fluctuations of motorized crystals and glasses.