Emergent Isotropic-Nematic Transition in 3D Semiflexible Active Polymers

Active semiflexible filament collectives, ranging from motor-driven cytoskeletal filaments to slender organisms such as cyanobacteria and worm aggregates, abound in nature. Yet how activity and flexibility jointly govern their organization, especially isotropic-nematic (I-N) transition, remains poorly understood. Performing large-scale Brownian dynamics simulations of 3D active semiflexible polymers with varying flexibility degrees, we show that tangential active forces systematically shift the I-N transition to higher densities, with the shift controlled by the flexibility degree and activity strength. Strikingly, activity alters the nature of the transition: discontinuous at low strengths, continuous at moderate strengths, and ultimately suppressed at high activity levels. The delayed I-N transition originates from enhanced collective bending fluctuations, resulting in chain shrinkage and enlargement of effective confinement tube. At moderate activity levels, these fluctuations can trigger large-scale excitations that stochastically drive temporal transitions between nematic and isotropic states, indicating an activity-induced instability of the nematic field. We summarize this behavior in nonequilibrium state diagrams of density and activity for different flexibility degrees.