Shearing self-propelled suspensions: arrest of coarsening and suppression of giant density fluctuations

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2011 Sep;84(3 Pt 1):031930. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.84.031930. Epub 2011 Sep 29.

Abstract

We study the effect of a linear shear flow on a collection of interacting active, self-propelled particles modeled via the Vicsek model. The imposed flow has a dramatic effect on the behavior of the model. We find that in the presence of shear there is no order-disorder transition, and that coarsening of the domains is arrested. Shear also suppresses the so-called giant density fluctuations that are observed in the quiescent limit.