Electrically tunable collective motion of dissipative solitons in chiral nematic films.
Nat Commun 2022;
13:2122. [PMID:
35440645 PMCID:
PMC9018705 DOI:
10.1038/s41467-022-29831-2]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2021] [Accepted: 03/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
From the motion of fish and birds, to migrating herds of ungulates, collective motion has attracted people for centuries. Active soft matter exhibits a plethora of emergent dynamic behaviors that mimic those of biological systems. Here we introduce an active system composed of dynamic dissipative solitons, i.e. directrons, which mimics the collective motion of living systems. Although the directrons are inanimate, artificial particle-like solitonic field configurations, they locally align their motions like their biological counterparts. Driven by external electric fields, hundreds of directrons are generated in a chiral nematic film. They start with random motions but self-organize into flocks and synchronize their motions. The directron flocks exhibit rich dynamic behaviors and induce population density fluctuations far larger than those in thermal equilibrium systems. They exhibit “turbulent” swimming patterns manifested by transient vortices and jets. They even distinguish topological defects, heading towards defects of positive topological strength and avoiding negative ones.
Understanding of the collective motion seen in biological systems is crucial for development of autonomous robots and swarm computing. The authors introduce an experimental platform with liquid crystal driven by external electric field, that mimics the collective motion of living systems.
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