https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-022-00230-1
Regular Article - Flowing Matter
Hydrodynamic effects on the liquid-hexatic transition of active colloids
1
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Bari and INFN, Sezione di Bari, via Amendola 173, 70126, Bari, Italy
2
Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire (CECAM), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Batochimie, Avenue Forel 2, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland
3
Istituto Applicazioni Calcolo, CNR, Via Amendola 122/D, 70126, Bari, Italy
b
claudio.caporusso@ba.infn.it
Received:
25
January
2022
Accepted:
25
August
2022
Published online:
13
September
2022
We study numerically the role of hydrodynamics in the liquid-hexatic transition of active colloids at intermediate activity, where motility induced phase separation (MIPS) does not occur. We show that in the case of active Brownian particles (ABP), the critical density of the transition decreases upon increasing the particle’s mass, enhancing ordering, while self-propulsion has the opposite effect in the activity regime considered. Active hydrodynamic particles (AHP), instead, undergo the liquid-hexatic transition at higher values of packing fraction 
than the corresponding ABP, suggesting that hydrodynamics have the net effect of disordering the system. At increasing densities, close to the hexatic-liquid transition, we found in the case of AHP the appearance of self-sustained organized motion with clusters of particles moving coherently.
© The Author(s) 2022
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