Active jamming: self-propelled soft particles at high density

Abstract

We study numerically the phases and dynamics of a dense collection of self-propelled particles with soft repulsive interactions in two dimensions. The model is motivated by recent in vitro experiments on confluent monolayers of migratory epithelial and endothelial cells. The phase diagram exhibits a liquid phase with giant number fluctuations at low packing fraction φ and high self-propulsion speed v(0) and a jammed phase at high φ and low v(0). The dynamics of the jammed phase is controlled by the low-frequency modes of the jammed packing.