Nontrivial effects of activity on the glassy dynamics of active self-propelled particles*

Effects of activity on the glassy dynamics are crucial for several critical biological processes, such as wound healing, cancer progressions, embryogenesis, Etc. It also extends the scope and extent of the as-yet mysterious physics of glass transition. Theories of equilibrium glassy dynamics have been extended for the active glasses where the constituent particles have a self-propulsion force, f₀, and a persistence time, τ_p, of their motion. While f₀ always drives the system away from the glassy regime, the effects of τ_p are more complex and depend on the activity details. The relaxation dynamics of active glassy systems seem qualitatively similar to that in an equilibrium system at an effective temperature. However, activity has nontrivial complex effects on the dynamical heterogeneity. In this talk, I will discuss some of these effects and show that mode-coupling theory, extended for active systems, can surprisingly capture both these aspects of activity.