Tunable collective dynamics of ellipsoidal Quincke particles

Collective behaviors in active systems become dramatically complicated in the presence of chirality. In this study, we show that ellipsoidal Quincke particles driven by an electric field exhibit flexible and tunable chirality because of the tilting of the spinning axis. As the tilting torque decreases with the increase of angular speed, the motion of individual particles transforms from localized circle motion to global rolling. However, because of the anisotropic shape and the resulting anisotropic polar interactions, it is dynamically easier for ellipsoids to bind and form rotating structures rather than to align their velocities. In dense systems, the suppression of velocity aligning produces transient dense clusters which produce dynamic heterogeneity. The formation and dissociation of dense clusters prohibit the emergence of large-scale collective motions and limit the amplitude of density fluctuations. These findings demonstrate that collective dynamics and thus the scale of density fluctuations in active systems with tunable chirality can be well controlled. This has potential applications in exploring disordered hyperuniform states.