• Accepted Paper

Order by inertia in spinning active matter: holey fluids and spin-textured crystals

Camille Jorge and Denis Bartolo

Phys. Rev. X - Accepted 22 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/xyym-pjh7

Abstract

Active matter sustains emergent flows at the expense of preserving structural order. The feedback between structure and viscous flows typically disrupts crystalline and liquid-crystalline organization by amplifying the very deformations they generate. Yet this destabilizing paradigm has recently been challenged by experiments showing that inertial fluid flows can stabilize few-body bound states of active spinners. Whether inertial active matter can sustain genuine cohesion and order at the many-body level, however, remains elusive. Here we investigate two-dimensional assemblies of macroscopic spinners operating at high Reynolds number and uncover two phase transitions leading to the emergence of a dilute percolating fluid and a dense spin-textured crystal. At low density, inertial flows generate two competing interactions: anisotropic attractions and transverse Magnus forces that continuously break and reconfigure bonds. Together they drive a percolation transition toward a dynamically rearranging holey liquid reminiscent of the empty-liquid states observed in equilibrium patchy colloids. At high density, the feedback between spin alignment and particle positions suppresses transverse rearrangements and yields a first-order transition toward a spin-ordered crystal. Our results demonstrate that, beyond the overdamped limit, hydrodynamic feedback can promote rather than destroy collective order, revealing a distinct regime of many-body active matter governed by inertial flows.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation

If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation