Globally aligned states and hydrodynamic traffic jams in confined active suspensions

Abstract

Strongly confined active liquids are subject to unique hydrodynamic interactions due to momentum screening and lubricated friction by the confining walls. Using numerical simulations, we demonstrate that 2D dilute suspensions of fore-aft asymmetric polar swimmers in a Hele-Shaw geometry can exhibit a rich variety of novel phase behaviors depending on particle shape, including: coherent polarized density waves with global alignment, stationary asters, persistent counter-rotating vortices, density shocks and rarefaction waves. We also explain these phenomena using a linear stability analysis and a nonlinear traffic flow model, both derived from a mean-field kinetic theory.