Jerky active matter: a phase field crystal model with translational and orientational memory

Abstract

Most field theories for active matter neglect effects of memory and inertia. However, recent experiments have found inertial delay to be important for the motion of self-propelled particles. A major challenge in the theoretical description of these effects, which makes the application of standard methods very difficult, is the fact that orientable particles have both translational and orientational degrees of freedom which do not necessarily relax on the same time scale. In this work, we derive the general mathematical form of a field theory for soft matter systems with two different time scales. This allows to obtain a phase field crystal model for polar (i.e., nonspherical or active) particles with translational and orientational memory. Notably, this theory is of third order in temporal derivatives and can thus be seen as a spatiotemporal jerky dynamics. We obtain the phase diagram of this model, which shows that, unlike in the passive case, the linear stability of the liquid state depends on the damping coefficients. Moreover, we investigate sound waves in active matter. It is found that, in active fluids, there are two different mechanisms for sound propagation. For certain parameter values and sufficiently high frequencies, sound mediated by polarization waves experiences less damping than usual passive sound mediated by pressure waves of the same frequency. By combining the different modes, acoustic frequency filters based on active fluids could be realized.