Symmetry-breaking motility of penetrable objects in active fluids

Abstract

We investigate how a symmetric penetrable object immersed in an active fluid becomes motile due to a negative drag acting in the direction of its velocity. While similar phenomena have been reported only for active fluids that posses polar or nematic order, we demonstrate that such motility can occur even in active fluids without any preexisting order. The emergence of object motility is characterized by both continuous and discontinuous transitions associated with the symmetry-breaking bifurcation of the object's steady-state velocity. Furthermore, we also discuss the relevance of the transitions to the nonmonotonic particle-size dependence of the object's diffusion coefficient.