We have studied spatial and temporal dynamic heterogeneity (DH) in a system of hard-sphere particles, subjected to active forces with constant amplitude and random direction determined by rotational diffusion with… Click to show full abstract
We have studied spatial and temporal dynamic heterogeneity (DH) in a system of hard-sphere particles, subjected to active forces with constant amplitude and random direction determined by rotational diffusion with correlation time τ. We have used a variety of observables to characterize the DH behavior, including the deviation from standard Stokes-Einstein (SE) relation, a non-Gaussian parameter α_{2}(Δt) for the distribution of particle displacement within a certain time interval Δt, a four-point susceptibility χ_{4}(Δt,ΔL) for the correlation in dynamics between any two points in space separated by distance ΔL within some time window Δt, and a vector spatial-temporal correlation function S_{vec}(R,Δt) for vector displacements within time interval Δt of particle pairs originally separated by R. By mapping the particle motion into a continuous-time random walk with constant jump length, we can obtain the average waiting time 〈t_{x}〉∝D_{s}^{-1} and persistence time 〈t_{p}〉∝η, with D_{s} the self-diffusion coefficient and η the shear viscosity, such that the observable λ=〈t_{p}〉/〈t_{x}〉∝D_{s}η can be calculated as a function of the control parameter τ to show how it deviates from its SE value λ_{0}. Interestingly, we find λ/λ_{0} shows a nonmonotonic behavior for large volume fraction φ_{a}, wherein λ/λ_{0} undergoes a minimum at a certain intermediate value of τ, indicating that both small and large particle activity may lead to strong DH. Such a reentrance phenomenon is further demonstrated in terms of the non-Gaussian parameters α_{2}, four-point susceptibility χ_{4}, and vector spatiotemporal correlation functions S_{vec}, respectively. Detail analysis shows that it is the competition between the dual roles of particle activity, namely, activity-induced higher effective temperature and activity-induced clustering, that leads to such nontrivial nonmonotonic behaviors. In addition, we find that DH may also show a maximum level at an intermediate value of φ_{a} if τ is large enough, implying that a more crowded system may be less heterogeneous than a less crowded one for a system with high particle activity.
               
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