Long-lived giant number fluctuations in a swarming granular nematic


Autoria(s): Narayan, Vijay; Ramaswamy, Sriram; Menon, Narayanan
Data(s)

06/07/2007

Resumo

Coherently moving flocks of birds, beasts, or bacteria are examples of living matter with spontaneous orientational order. How do these systems differ from thermal equilibrium systems with such liquid crystalline order? Working with a fluidized monolayer of macroscopic rods in the nematic liquid crystalline phase, we find giant number fluctuations consistent with a standard deviation growing linearly with the mean, in contrast to any situation where the central limit theorem applies. These fluctuations are long-lived, decaying only as a logarithmic function of time. This shows that flocking, coherent motion, and large-scale inhomogeneity can appear in a system in which particles do not communicate except by contact.

Formato

application/pdf

Identificador

http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/26299/1/105.pdf

Narayan, Vijay and Ramaswamy, Sriram and Menon, Narayanan (2007) Long-lived giant number fluctuations in a swarming granular nematic. In: Science, 317 (5834). pp. 105-108.

Publicador

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Relação

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/317/5834/105

http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/26299/

Palavras-Chave #Physics
Tipo

Journal Article

PeerReviewed