Oscillating collective motion of active rotors in confinement

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1922633117
• Publication Date: 2020-05-19T21:20:53Z
• Authors: Peng Liu; Hongwei Zhu; Ying Zeng; Guangle Du; Luhui Ning; Dunyou Wang; Ke Chen; Ying Lu; Ning Zheng; Fangfu Ye; Mingcheng Yang
• Keywords: Active matter; Collective motion; Parity (physics)

Significance The exploration of chiral active matter composed self-spinning objects, which breaks both parity and time-reversal symmetries, is an exciting rapidly developing area. A particularly interesting phenomenon the emergence a spontaneous unidirectional collective edge flow in confinement, with potentials for robust material transport. This unique feature has generally been discussed context incompressible structureless homogeneous fluid. Here, we show that confinement-induced nonuniform distribution spinners greatly influences flow, causing spatially oscillatory pattern. Moreover, as structure media varies, different modes emerge. These findings significantly advance our understanding behavior confinement.