Nonreciprocal constitutive laws for oriented active solids

Abstract We present an overdamped continuum description of oriented active solids in which interactions respect the symmetries of space but do not obey the principle of action and reaction. Taking position and orientation as the kinematic variables, we examine the conservation of the linear and angular momentum variables in an elementary volume. We find that nonreciprocal interactions yield, in addition to the areal stresses and moment stresses of classical elasticity, volumetric forces and torques that act as local sources of momentum and angular momentum. Since, by symmetry, these can only depend on the strains, nonreciprocity requires the extension of constitutive modeling to strain-dependent volumetric forces and torques. Using Cartan’s method of moving frames and Curie’s principle, we derive the materially linear constitutive law that underpins the nonreciprocal, geometrically nonlinear elasticity of the continuum. We study this constitutive law exhaustively for a one-dimensional active solid and identify striking nonreciprocal effects—traveling waves, linear instabilities, spontaneous motion of and about the center of mass—that are absent in a passive, reciprocally interacting solid. Numerical simulations of a particulate active solid model, consisting of a linear assembly of hydrodynamically interacting active particles, yields long-wavelength behavior that is in excellent agreement with theory. Our study provides the foundation for a principled macroscopic mechanics of oriented active solids with symmetry-invariant, nonreciprocal microscopic interactions.