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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 28: Active Matter IV (joint session DY/BP/CPP)

CPP 28.2: Vortrag

Dienstag, 10. März 2026, 14:15–14:30, ZEU/0160

Dead or alive?—Probing scale-dependent liveliness in multiscale active matter — •Joscha Mecke¹ and Klaus Kroy² — ¹Institute for Advanced Study, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China — ²Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

If you have ever watched live and dead trouts swimming upstream, side by side, you may have wondered how closer inspection of their mesoscale activity might help to tell them apart. But probing spatially heterogeneous activity in living matter is a major challenge. We demonstrate the emergence of multiple effective (“active”) temperatures in nonequilibrium molecular- and Brownian-dynamics simulations of an active polymer. Energy injection at different length scales leads to mode coupling, inter-modal energy transfer, and entropy production. We put forward a generalised Langevin equation for a labelled monomer, which, by application of a harmonic potential, can serve as a spectroscopic device. Upon varying the trap stiffness, we can selectively scan through the emergent effective temperatures and thereby resolve the scale-dependent activity. Our approach thus provides a minimally invasive spectroscopic tool to generate quantitative maps of liveliness, across multiple scales.

Keywords: Multiscale activity; Inhomogeneous activity; Effective temperatures; Probing activity