Active nematics are intrinsically phase-separated

Two-dimensional nonequilibrium nematic steady states, as found in agitated granular-rod monolayers or films of orientable amoeboid cells, were predicted [Europhys. Lett. {\bf 62} (2003) 196] to have giant number fluctuations, with standard deviation proportional to the mean. We show numerically that the steady state of such systems is {\em macroscopically phase-separated}, yet dominated by fluctuations, as in the Das-Barma model [PRL {\bf 85} (2000) 1602]. We suggest experimental tests of our findings in granular and living-cell systems.Comment: 4 pages, 6 .eps figures, accepted for publication in PRL 3 Aug 0

Collective stochastic resonance in shear-induced melting of sliding bilayers

The far-from-equilibrium dynamics of two crystalline two-dimensional monolayers driven past each other is studied using Brownian dynamics simulations. While at very high and low driving rates the layers slide past one another retaining their crystalline order, for intermediate range of drives the system alternates irregularly between the crystalline and fluid-like phases. A dynamical phase diagram in the space of interlayer coupling and drive is obtained. A qualitative understanding of this stochastic alternation between the liquid-like and crystalline phases is proposed in terms of a reduced model within which it can be understood as a stochastic resonance for the dynamics of collective order parameter variables. This remarkable example of stochastic resonance in a spatially extended system should be seen in experiments which we propose in the paper.Comment: 12 pages, 18 eps figures, minor changes in text and labelling of figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Suspensions far from equilibrium

A review is presented of recent experimental and theoretical work on the dynamics of suspensions of particles in viscous fluids, with emphasis on phenomena that should be of interest to experimenters and theoreticians working on the statistical mechanics of condensed matter. The article includes a broad introduction to the field, a list of references to important papers, and a technical discussion of some recent theoretical progress in which the author was involved

Universal power law in crossover from integrability to quantum chaos

We study models of interacting fermions in one dimension to investigate the crossover from integrability to non-integrability, i.e., quantum chaos, as a function of system size. Using exact diagonalization of finite-sized systems, we study this crossover by obtaining the energy level statistics and Drude weight associated with transport. Our results reinforce the idea that for system size $L \to \infty$ non-integrability sets in for an arbitrarily small integrability-breaking perturbation. The crossover value of the perturbation scales as a power law $\sim L^{-3}$ when the integrable system is gapless and the scaling appears to be robust to microscopic details and the precise form of the perturbation. We conjecture that the exponent in the power law is characteristic of the random matrix ensemble describing the non-integrable system. For systems with a gap, the crossover scaling appears to be faster than a power law.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figure

Kepler orbits of settling discs

The collective dynamics of objects moving through a viscous fluid is complex and counterintuitive. A key to understanding the role of nontrivial particle shape in this complexity is the interaction of a pair of sedimenting spheroids. We report experimental results on two discs settling at negligible Reynolds number ($\simeq 10^{-4}$), finding two classes of bound periodic orbits, each with transitions to scattering states. We account for these dynamics, at leading far-field order, through an effective Hamiltonian in which gravitational driving endows orientation with the properties of momentum. This leads to a precise correspondence with the Kepler problem of planetary motion for a wide range of initial conditions, and also to orbits with no Keplerian analogue. This notion of internal degrees of freedom manifesting themselves as an effective inertia is potentially a more general tool in Stokesian driven systems