(520b) Entropic and Active Matter: Insights from Simulation

Our understanding of the role of steric interactions, crowding, dissipation, and entropy in colloidal soft matter systems has advanced greatly in recent years from computer simulations by our community. The emergence of directional entropic forces and entropic valence arising from particle shape drive ordering transitions to metastable, equilibrium, and persistent complex structures. In this talk, we present new results on phase transitions in hard particle systems both in, and away from, equilibrium. We compare our findings with enthalpically driven transitions, and describe new simulation tools under development for the study of these types of systems.