Paper Detail
Maks Pečnik Bambič, Nuno A. M. Araújo, Giorgio Volpe
Collective rotations are common in active matter, enhancing cohesion, transport, and mixing. They are typically attributed to chiral non-reciprocal dynamics due to intrinsic particle chirality, torque-generating interactions among units, or geometric confinement. Here, we uncover a different mechanism for rotational order in active matter where a dynamic environment coordinates the self-organization of non-chiral active particles into living crystals exhibiting sustained collective solid-like rotations. At intermediate densities, feedback from a fluctuating landscape of passive Brownian particles stabilizes large living crystals of obstacle-avoiding run-and-tumble agents. Strikingly, this environmental feedback also produces living crystals with qualitatively distinct dynamics: collective solid-like spinning emerges for particles with long persistence times approaching ballistic motion, rather than for particles moving by conventional enhanced diffusion. Beyond revealing a new route to collective rotational order in active matter, these findings highlight the integral role of a dynamic environment in self-organization and suggest environment-mediated design principles for active materials with unconventional dynamical responses.
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@article{bambi2026spinning,
title = {Spinning Living Crystals of Run-and-Tumble Particles with Environmental Feedback},
author = {Maks Pečnik Bambič and Nuno A. M. Araújo and Giorgio Volpe},
year = {2026},
abstract = {Collective rotations are common in active matter, enhancing cohesion, transport, and mixing. They are typically attributed to chiral non-reciprocal dynamics due to intrinsic particle chirality, torque-generating interactions among units, or geometric confinement. Here, we uncover a different mechanism for rotational order in active matter where a dynamic environment coordinates the self-organization of non-chiral active particles into living crystals exhibiting sustained collective solid-like ro},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16163},
keywords = {cond-mat.soft, cond-mat.stat-mech},
eprint = {2604.16163},
archiveprefix = {arXiv},
}
{}