RESEARCH ARTICLE

Clustering of quorum sensing colloidal particles

¹ MOE Key Laboratory of Advanced Micro-Structured Materials and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Special Artificial Microstructure Materials and Technology, School of Physics Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
² Dipartimento di Fisica, Universit`a di Camerino, Camerino I-62032, Italy

^* Corresponding authors (emails: yunyunli@tongji.edu.cn (Yunyun Li); fabio.marchesoni@pg.infn.it (Fabio Marchesoni))

Received: 8 December 2023
Revised: 24 January 2024
Accepted: 5 February 2024

Abstract

We propose a simple model of colloidal suspension, whereby individual particles change their diffusivity from high (hot) to low (cold), as the local concentration of their closest peers grows larger than a certain threshold. Such a non-reciprocal interactive mechanism is known in biology as quorum sensing. Upon tuning the parameters of the adopted quorum sensing protocol, the suspension is numerically shown to go through a variety of two-phase (hot and cold) configurations. This is an archetypal model with potential applications in robotics and social studies.