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Uncovering the underlying mechanisms of phase transitions in chiral active particles

Dong Jian,Jie Su,Jun Wang,Jin Wang

Published 2025 in Communications Physics

ABSTRACT

Chiral active matter widely exists in nature and exhibits rich dynamical behaviors. Among these, chiral active particles (CAPs) with alignment effects show collective motions such as orderly rotating droplets and distinct phase transitions under different chirality degrees. However, the underlying dynamical and thermodynamical mechanisms of the phase transitions in the CAP system are not quite clear. Here, by combining the nonequilibrium landscape-flux theory with the coarse-grained mapping method, we quantified the potential landscape and the flux field to reflect global driving forces of the CAP system, characterizing the number and location of the steady states. Moreover, we revealed that mean flux and entropy production rate are respectively the dynamical and thermodynamical origins for the nonequilibrium phase transition, further providing a practical tool to confirm the continuity of the phase transition and the phase boundary. Our findings may inspire the design of experimental CAPs and present a framework for investigating phase transition behaviors in other complex active systems. Chiral active matter, including biological swimmers such as E. coli and sperm cells, exhibits complex nonequilibrium phase transitions influenced by noise intensity and particle angular velocity. Here, the authors employ coarse-grained mapping and landscape-flux theory to such transitions, with a focus on the dynamical and thermodynamic origins, as well as the implications for time-reversal symmetry breaking of the system.

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