Controlling active matter: Insights from the response

Active constituents burn fuel to sustain individual motion, giving rise to collective effects that are not seen in systems at thermal equilibrium, such as phase separation with purely repulsive interactions. There is a great potential in harnessing the striking phenomenology of active matter to build novel controllable and responsive materials that surpass passive ones. Yet, we currently lack a systematic roadmap to predict the protocols driving active systems between different states in a way that is thermodynamically optimal. Equilibrium thermodynamics is an inadequate foundation to this end, due to the dissipation rate arising from the constant fuel consumption in active matter.

In this talk I will outline the physical and mathematical building blocks of a versatile framework for the control of physical systems with internal driving: active matter, that exhibit continuous or discrete-states. Clear comparisons are made with the equilibrium "at passivity" regime. The framework builds upon recent developments in stochastic thermodynamics and response theory.