Percolation transitions in the binary mixture of active Brownian particles with different softness

Abstract: Homogeneous active Brownian particle (ABP) systems with purely repulsive interactions are considered to have simple phase behavior, but various physical attributes of active entities can lead to variation in the collective dynamics. Recent studies have shown that even homogeneous ABPs exhibit complex behavior due to an interplay between particle softness and motility. However, the heterogeneity in composition of ABPs has not been explored yet. In this paper, we study the structural properties of a binary mixture of ABPs with different particle softness, by varying the relative softness and composition. We found that upon varying the motility parameter, the system underwent a motility-induced phase separation (MIPS) followed by a percolation transition similar to the homogeneous systems; however, there is complex structure formation within the dense phase of the MIPS which depends on the relative softness of the binary system. Furthermore, the presence of a non-linear scaling for different compositions of heterogeneous ABPs suggests that there is a complex relationship between the composition and the structural properties. Our study demonstrates that the composition heterogeneity of ABPs can also lead to complex phase behavior.