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Abstract:

Chemical affinities are responsible for driving active matter systems out of equilibrium. At the nano-scale, molecular machines interact with the surrounding environment and are subjected to external forces. The mechano-chemical coupling which arises naturally in these systems reveals a complex interplay between chemical and mechanical degrees of freedom with strong impact on their active mechanism. By considering various models far from equilibrium, we show that the tuning of applied forces gives rise to a nonlinear response that causes a non-monotonic behaviour in the machines’ activity. Our findings have implications in understanding, designing, and triggering such processes by controlled application of external fields, including the collective dynamics of larger non-equilibrium systems where the total dissipation and performance might be affected by internal and inter-particle interactions.

Abstract:

Turbulent flows are observed in low‐Reynolds active fluids, which display similar phenomenology to the classical inertial turbulence but are of a different nature. Understanding the dependence of this new type of turbulence on dimensionality is a fundamental challenge in non‐equilibrium physics. Real‐space structures and kinetic energy spectra of bacterial turbulence are experimentally measured from two to three dimensions. The turbulence shows three regimes separated by two critical confinement heights, resulting from the competition of bacterial length, vortex size and confinement height. Meanwhile, the kinetic energy spectra display distinct universal scaling laws in quasi‐2D and 3D regimes, independent of bacterial activity, length, and confinement height, whereas scaling exponents transition in two steps around the critical heights. The scaling behaviors are well captured by the hydrodynamic model we develop, which employs image systems to represent the effects of confining boundaries. The study suggests a framework for investigating the effect of dimensionality on non‐equilibrium self‐organized systems.