Reversible to irreversible transitions for cyclically driven particles on periodic obstacle arrays

We examine the collective dynamics of disks moving through a square array of obstacles under cyclic square wave driving. Below a critical density, we find that the system organizes into a reversible state in which the disks return to the same positions at the end of every drive cycle. Above this density, the dynamics are irreversible and the disks do not return to the same positions after each cycle. The critical density depends strongly on the angle θ between the driving direction and a symmetry axis of the obstacle array, with the highest critical densities appearing at commensurate angles such as θ = 0° and θ = 45° and the lowest critical densities falling at θ = arctan (0.618), the inverse of the golden ratio, where the flow is the most degenerate. As the density increases, the number of cycles required to reach a reversible state grows as a power law with an exponent near ν = 1.36, similar to what is found in periodically driven colloidal and superconducting vortex systems.