Nonequilibrium phase behaviour from minimization of free power dissipation

Abstract

We develop a general theory for describing phase coexistence between nonequilibrium steady states in Brownian systems, based on power functional theory (M. Schmidt and J.M. Brader, J. Chem. Phys. 138, 214101 (2013)). We apply the framework to the special case of fluid-fluid phase separation of active soft sphere swimmers. The central object of the theory, the dissipated free power, is calculated via computer simulations and compared to a simple analytical approximation. The theory describes well the simulation data and predicts motility-induced phase separation due to avoidance of dissipative clusters.