Delayed Active Swimmer in a Velocity Landscape

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Holubec, Viktor, Fischer, Alexander, Volpe, Giovanni, Cichos, Frank
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Holubec, Viktor
Fischer, Alexander
Volpe, Giovanni
Cichos, Frank
author_facet Holubec, Viktor
Fischer, Alexander
Volpe, Giovanni
Cichos, Frank
contents Self-propelled active particles exhibit delayed responses to environmental changes, modulating their propulsion speed through intrinsic sensing and feedback mechanisms. This adaptive behavior fundamentally determines their dynamics and self-organization in active matter systems, with implications for biological microswimmers and engineered microrobots. Here, we investigate active Brownian particles whose propulsion speed is governed by spatially varying activity landscapes, incorporating a temporal delay between environmental sensing and speed adaptation. Through analytical solutions derived for both short-time and long-time delay regimes, we demonstrate that steady-state density and polarization profiles exhibit maxima at characteristic delays. Significantly, we observe that the polarization profile undergoes sign reversal when the swimming distance during the delay time exceeds the characteristic diffusion length, providing a novel mechanism for controlling particle transport without external fields. Our theoretical predictions, validated through experimental observations and numerical simulations, establish time delay as a crucial control parameter for particle transport and organization in active matter systems. These findings provide insights into how biological microorganisms might use response delays to gain navigation advantages and suggest design principles for synthetic microswimmers with programmable responses to heterogeneous environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_11042
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Delayed Active Swimmer in a Velocity Landscape
Holubec, Viktor
Fischer, Alexander
Volpe, Giovanni
Cichos, Frank
Soft Condensed Matter
Statistical Mechanics
Self-propelled active particles exhibit delayed responses to environmental changes, modulating their propulsion speed through intrinsic sensing and feedback mechanisms. This adaptive behavior fundamentally determines their dynamics and self-organization in active matter systems, with implications for biological microswimmers and engineered microrobots. Here, we investigate active Brownian particles whose propulsion speed is governed by spatially varying activity landscapes, incorporating a temporal delay between environmental sensing and speed adaptation. Through analytical solutions derived for both short-time and long-time delay regimes, we demonstrate that steady-state density and polarization profiles exhibit maxima at characteristic delays. Significantly, we observe that the polarization profile undergoes sign reversal when the swimming distance during the delay time exceeds the characteristic diffusion length, providing a novel mechanism for controlling particle transport without external fields. Our theoretical predictions, validated through experimental observations and numerical simulations, establish time delay as a crucial control parameter for particle transport and organization in active matter systems. These findings provide insights into how biological microorganisms might use response delays to gain navigation advantages and suggest design principles for synthetic microswimmers with programmable responses to heterogeneous environments.
title Delayed Active Swimmer in a Velocity Landscape
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.11042