Hydrodynamics of Random-Organizing Hyperuniform Fluids

Disordered hyperuniform structures are locally random while uniform like crystals at large length scales. Recently, an exotic hyperuniform fluid state was found in several non-equilibrium systems, while the underlying physics remains unknown. In this work, we propose a non-equilibrium (driven-dissipative) hard-sphere model and formulate a hydrodynamic theory based on Navier-Stokes equations to uncover the general mechanism of the fluidic hyperuniformity (HU). At a fixed density, this model system undergoes a smooth transition from an absorbing state to an active hyperuniform fluid, then to the equilibrium fluid by changing the dissipation strength. We study the criticality of the absorbing phase transition. We find that the origin of fluidic HU can be understood as the damping of a stochastic harmonic oscillator in $q$ space, which indicates that the suppressed long-wavelength density fluctuation in the hyperuniform fluid can exhibit as either acoustic (resonance) mode or diffusive (overdamped) mode. Importantly, our theory reveals that the damping dissipation and active reciprocal interaction (driving) are two ingredients for fluidic HU. Based on this principle, we further demonstrate how to realize the fluidic HU in an experimentally accessible active spinner system and discuss the possible realization in other systems.Comment: Supplementary information can be found at https://www.dropbox.com/s/ksic8v9chw7a7ir/SIpnas.pdf?dl=

Self-assembled multi-layer simple cubic photonic crystals of oppositely charged colloids in confinement

Designing and fabricating self-assembled open colloidal crystals have become one major direction in soft matter community because of many promising applications associated with open colloidal crystals. However, most of the self-assembled crystals found in experiments are not open but close-packed. Here by using computer simulation, we systematically investigate the self-assembly of oppositely charged colloidal hard spheres confined between two parallel hard walls, and we find that the confinement can stabilize multi-layer NaCl-like (simple cubic) open crystals. The maximal layers of stable NaCl-like crystal increases with decreasing the inverse screening length. More interestingly, at finite low temperature, the large vibrational entropy can stabilize some multi-layer NaCl-like crystals against the most energetically favoured close-packed crystals. In the parameter range studied, we find upto 4-layer NaCl-like crystal to be stable in confinement. Our photonic calculation shows that the inverse 4-layer NaCl-like crystal can already reproduce the large photonic band gaps of the bulk simple cubic crystal, which open at low frequency range with low dielectric contrast. This suggests new possibilities of using confined colloidal systems to fabricate open crystalline materials with novel photonic properties

Driving dynamic colloidal assembly using eccentric self-propelled colloids

Designing protocols to dynamically direct the self-assembly of colloidal particles has become an important direction in soft matter physics because of the promising applications in fabrication of dynamic responsive functional materials. Here using computer simulations, we found that in the mixture of passive colloids and eccentric self-propelled active particles, when the eccentricity and self-propulsion of active particles are high enough, the eccentric active particles can push passive colloids to form a large dense dynamic cluster, and the system undergoes a novel dynamic demixing transition. Our simulations show that the dynamic demixing occurs when the eccentric active particles move much faster than the passive particles such that the dynamic trajectories of different active particles can overlap with each other while passive particles are depleted from the dynamic trajectories of active particles. Our results suggest that this is in analogy to the entropy driven demixing in colloid-polymer mixtures, in which polymer random coils can overlap with each other while deplete the colloids. More interestingly, we find that by fixing the passive colloid composition at certain value, with increasing the density, the system undergoes an intriguing re-entrant mixing, and the demixing only occurs within certain intermediate density range. This suggests a new way of designing active matter to drive the self-assembly of passive colloids and fabricate dynamic responsive materials.Comment: Accepted in Soft Matter. Supplementary information can found at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xb3u5iaoucc2ild/AABFUyqjXips7ewaie2rFbj_a?dl=

Non-Equilibrium Strongly Hyperuniform Fluids of Circle Active Particles with Large Local Density Fluctuations

Disordered hyperuniform structures are an exotic state of matter having vanishing long-wavelength density fluctuations similar to perfect crystals but without long-range order. Although its importance in materials science has been brought to the fore in past decades, the rational design of experimentally realizable disordered strongly hyperuniform microstructures remains challenging. Here we find a new type of non-equilibrium fluid with strong hyperuniformity in two-dimensional systems of chiral active particles, where particles perform independent circular motions of the radius R with the same handedness. This new hyperuniform fluid features a special length scale, i.e., the diameter of the circular trajectory of particles, below which large density fluctuations are observed. By developing a dynamic mean-field theory, we show that the large local density fluctuations can be explained as a motility-induced microphase separation, while the Fickian diffusion at large length scales and local center-of-mass-conserved noises are responsible for the global hyperuniformity

Self-Assembled Chiral Photonic Crystals From Colloidal Helices Racemate

Chiral crystals consisting of micro-helices have many optical properties while presently available fabrication processes limit their large-scale applications in photonic devices. Here, by using a simplified simulation method, we investigate a bottom-up self-assembly route to build up helical crystals from the smectic monolayer of colloidal helices racemate. With increasing the density, the system undergoes an entropy-driven co-crystallization by forming crystals of various symmetries with different helical shapes. In particular, we identify two crystals of helices arranged in the binary honeycomb and square lattices, which are essentially composed by two sets of opposite-handed chiral crystal. Photonic calculations show that these chiral structures can have large complete photonic bandgaps. In addition, in the self-assembled chiral square crystal, we also find dual polarization bandgaps that selectively forbid the propagation of circularly polarized lights of a specific handedness along the helical axis direction. The self-assembly process in our proposed system is robust, suggesting possibilities of using chiral colloids to assemble photonic metamaterials.Comment: Accepted in ACS Nan

Random organization and non-equilibrium hyperuniform fluids on a sphere

Random organizing hyperuniform fluid induced by reciprocal activation is a non-equilibrium fluid with vanishing density fluctuations at large length scales like crystals. Here we extend this new state of matter to a closed manifold, namely a spherical surface. We find that the random organization on a spherical surface behaves similar to that in two dimensional Euclidean space, and the absorbing transition on a sphere also belongs to the conserved directed percolation universality class. Moreover, the reciprocal activation can also induce a non-equilibrium hyperuniform fluid on a sphere. The spherical structure factor at the absorbing transition and the non-equilibrium hyperuniform fluid phases are scaled as $S(l \rightarrow 0) \sim (l/R)^{0.45}$ and $S(l \rightarrow 0) \sim l(l+1)/R^2$, respectively, which are both hyperuniform according to the definition of hyperuniformity on a sphere with $l$ the wave number and $R$ the radius of the spherical surface. We also consider the impact of inertia in realistic hyperuniform fluids, and it is found only adding an extra length-scale, above which hyperuniform scaling appears. Our finding suggests a new method for creating non-equilibrium hyperuniform fluids on closed manifolds to avoid boundary effects.Comment: Accepted in J. Chem. Phy

RoughSet-DDPM: An Image Super-Resolution Method Based on Rough set Denoising Diffusion Probability Model

Image super-resolution aims to generate high-resolution (HR) images from low-resolution (LR) inputs. Existing methods like autoregressive models, generative adversarial networks (GANs), and denoising diffusion probability models (DDPMs) have limitations in image quality or sampling efficiency. This paper proposes Rough Set-DDPM, a new super-resolution technique combining rough set theory and DDPMs. The rough set formulation divides the DDPM sampling sequence into optimal sub-columns by minimizing roughness of sample sets. Particle swarm optimization identifies the sub-columns with lowest roughness. Rough Set-DDPM applies iterative denoising on these optimal columns to output HR images. Experiments on the FFHQ dataset validate that Rough Set-DDPM improves DDPM sampling efficiency while maintaining image fidelity. Quantitative results show Rough Set-DDPM requires fewer sampling steps and generates higher quality HR images compared to autoregressive models and GANs. By enhancing DDPM sampling, Rough Set-DDPM provides an effective approach to super-resolution that balances image quality and sampling speed. The key contributions include introducing rough sets to optimize DDPM sampling and demonstrating superior performance over existing methods