Turbulent Dynamics in Active Solids

Abstract: We investigate numerically the polar ordering dynamics in the active elastic solid model (AES) and find classic signatures of turbulent dynamics: power-law scaling for the energy spectrum and non-Gaussian statistics of velocity increments. However, there is no energy cascade, in line with previous findings for active turbulence in fluids. The results extend the concept of active turbulence to solid systems and are expected to be important for understanding active biological solids, such as bacterial colonies and migrating epithelial monolayers.