Tracer dynamics in an interacting active bath: fluctuations and energy partition

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sarkar, Ritwick, Santra, Ion
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Sarkar, Ritwick
Santra, Ion
author_facet Sarkar, Ritwick
Santra, Ion
contents We investigate the dynamics of a massive tracer particle coupled to an interacting active bath, modeled as a harmonic chain of overdamped active particles analytically, with an aim to understand the impact of bath interactions and activity on the nonequilibrium fluctuations of the tracer. From the microscopic equations, we derive the tracer particle's effective Langevin equation, obtaining the dissipative and stochastic forces from the bath. We analyze the friction kernel, revealing power-law tails in the weak coupling limit and exponential decay in the strong coupling regime. Due to the interplay between bath interactions, probe-bath coupling, and activity, the mean squared displacement, velocity, and stationary velocity correlations exhibit different dynamical regimes, which we characterize analytically. Under harmonic confinement, we find that energy equipartition holds at low activity but breaks down at higher activity, with the kinetic energy exhibiting a non-monotonic dependence on the activity of the bath.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_15250
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Tracer dynamics in an interacting active bath: fluctuations and energy partition
Sarkar, Ritwick
Santra, Ion
Statistical Mechanics
Soft Condensed Matter
We investigate the dynamics of a massive tracer particle coupled to an interacting active bath, modeled as a harmonic chain of overdamped active particles analytically, with an aim to understand the impact of bath interactions and activity on the nonequilibrium fluctuations of the tracer. From the microscopic equations, we derive the tracer particle's effective Langevin equation, obtaining the dissipative and stochastic forces from the bath. We analyze the friction kernel, revealing power-law tails in the weak coupling limit and exponential decay in the strong coupling regime. Due to the interplay between bath interactions, probe-bath coupling, and activity, the mean squared displacement, velocity, and stationary velocity correlations exhibit different dynamical regimes, which we characterize analytically. Under harmonic confinement, we find that energy equipartition holds at low activity but breaks down at higher activity, with the kinetic energy exhibiting a non-monotonic dependence on the activity of the bath.
title Tracer dynamics in an interacting active bath: fluctuations and energy partition
topic Statistical Mechanics
Soft Condensed Matter
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.15250