Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

STATISTICAL PHYSICS

The oddity of active matter

Nature Physics volume 17, pages 1193–1194 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

Active matter can have macroscopic properties that defy the usual laws of hydrodynamics. Now these tell-tale properties have been traced down to the non-equilibrium character and handedness of interactions between individual particles.

Matter can be brought into a non-equilibrium state by injecting energy through external manipulation — by rapidly stirring or heating it, for example. But active matter presents a different class of non-equilibrium system, in which energy is injected on the scale of individual particles, typically by endowing each of them with some self-propulsion mechanism1. For a macroscopic observer, this form of driving is more subtle, and one may wonder what type of experiment would reveal that a sample of matter is active. To provide insight into this question, Ming Han and co-workers derived the large-scale hydrodynamic properties of a specific model for active particles, as reported in Nature Physics2.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Spinning disks that exchange energy through friction upon collision serve as a model for chiral active matter.

References

  1. Marchetti, M. C. et al. Rev. Mod. Phys. 85, 1143 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Han, M. et al. Nat. Phys. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01360-7 (2021).

  3. Chaikin, P. M. & Lubensky, T. C. Principles of Condensed Matter Physics (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995).

  4. Avron, J. E. J. Stat. Phys. 92, 543–557 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Banerjee, D., Souslov, A., Abanov, A. G. & Vitelli, V. Nat. Commun. 8, 1573 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Patrick Pietzonka

Authors
  1. Patrick Pietzonka
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Patrick Pietzonka.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Pietzonka, P. The oddity of active matter. Nat. Phys. 17, 1193–1194 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01318-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01318-9

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing