Figure 1

Phase diagram. (a) Phase diagram for both the equilibrium and the active nematic in the density - inverse temperature plane. The equilibrium system remains in the isotropic (EI) state in the low density regime (on the left of the solid line) and in the nematic (EN) state in the high density regime (on the right of the solid line). The active nematic goes from the disordered isotropic (I) state to the locally ordered inhomogeneous mixed (IM) state with increasing density or decreasing temperature. The I - IM transition occurs with the appearance of clear bands (BS) in the low temperature regime. In the high density regime the active nematic shows bistability between the IM and the homogeneous globally ordered (HO) state. (b) Upper panel shows particle inclination towards the horizontal direction. Colour bar ranging from zero to one indicates vertical to horizontal orientation, respectively. BS is the banded state configuration shown for (βε, C) = (2.0, 0.38). IM, HO and EN state configurations are shown for (βε, C) = (2.0, 0.78). Lower panel shows the coarse-grained density in the respective states.