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Active Matter

The term active matter describes diverse systems, spanning macroscopic (e.g. shoals of fish and flocks of birds) to microscopic scales (e.g. migrating cells, motile bacteria and gels formed through the interaction of nanoscale molecular motors with cytoskeletal filaments within cells). Such systems are often idealizable in terms of collections of individual units, referred to as active particles or self-propelled particles, which take energy from an internal replenishable energy depot or ambient medium and transduce it into useful work performed on the environment, in addition to dissipating a fraction of this energy into heat. These individual units may interact both directly as well as through disturbances propagated via the medium in which they are immersed. Active particles can exhibit remarkable collective behaviour as a consequence of these interactions, including non-equilibrium phase transitions between novel dynamical phases, large fluctuations violating expectations from the central limit theorem and substantial robustness against the disordering effects of thermal fluctuations. In this chapter, following a brief summary of experimental systems which may be classified as examples of active matter, I describe some of the principles which underlie the modeling of such systems.