The Mechanics and Statistics of Active Matter

Active particles contain internal degrees of freedom with the ability to take in and dissipate energy and, in the process, execute systematic movement. Examples include all living organisms and their motile constituents such as molecular motors. This article reviews recent progress in applying the principles of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics and hydrodynamics to form a systematic theory of the behavior of collections of active particles–active matter–with only minimal regard to microscopic details. A unified view of the many kinds of active matter is presented, encompassing not only living systems but inanimate analogs. Theory and experiment are discussed side by side.

• Publication year

  2010

• Venue

  Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics

• Publication date

  2010-04-12

• Fields of study

  Physics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-070909-104101arXiv 1004.1933
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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