Active Droplet Systems: Dynamics, Assembly and Collective Behavior

Dear Colleagues,

A central challenge in active matter physics is to understand how local energy consumption and nonequilibrium interactions give rise to complex and life-like phenomena: autonomous motion, adaptive behavior, and collective organization. Active droplet systems provide a powerful framework for addressing this question. In contrast to solid active matter, droplets possess intrinsic internal and interfacial degrees of freedom, including deformability, internal circulation, and surface-mediated exchange with the surrounding medium. These features make them particularly suitable for exploring feedback between motion, field generation, and mechanical response, and enable a variety of life-like behaviors such as persistent self-propulsion, oscillation, mode switching, and collective motion. Such behaviors can arise through interfacial stresses, chemical reactions, mass transfer, or external fields, and these effects are often strongly coupled.

Understanding active droplet systems therefore requires the study of multiscale and nonlinear dynamics, in which hydrodynamics, interfacial fields, and transport processes are intricately intertwined. Active droplet systems thus provide an attractive model platform for clarifying the general principles underlying autonomous and life-like dynamics in nonequilibrium condensed matter. This Special Issue is intended to cover recent progress in the study of active droplet systems, including their nonequilibrium dynamics, self-organization, interfacial and hydrodynamic coupling, and links to their life-like functionalities. Topics of interest include self-propulsion, deformation, oscillation, synchronization, chemohydrodynamic coupling, field-mediated interactions, dynamic assembly, and collective states in active droplet systems.

Dr. Shinpei Tanaka
Guest Editor

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