Abstract
We characterize cell motion in experiments and show that the transition to collective motion in colonies of gliding bacterial cells confined to a monolayer appears through the organization of cells into larger moving clusters. Collective motion by nonequilibrium cluster formation is detected for a critical cell packing fraction around 17%. This transition is characterized by a scale-free power-law cluster-size distribution, with an exponent 0.88±0.07, and the appearance of giant number fluctuations. Our findings are in quantitative agreement with simulations of self-propelled rods. This suggests that the interplay of self-propulsion and the rod shape of bacteria is sufficient to induce collective motion.
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