Tuning attraction and repulsion between active particles through persistence

Abstract

We consider the interplay between persistent motion, which is a generic property of active particles, and a recoil interaction which causes particles to jump apart on contact. This recoil process is inspired by the 'shock' dynamics of certain microorganisms, such as Pyramimonas octopus, and always generates an effective repulsion between a pair of passive particles. Highly persistent particles can be attractive or repulsive, according to the shape of the recoil distribution. We show that the latter case admits an unexpected transition to attraction at intermediate persistence lengths that originates in the advective effects of persistence. This allows active particles to control the way they interact by varying the persistence length.

Interacting, running and tumbling: The active Dyson Brownian motion

“…At present, very few exact results exist, even in one dimension, beyond two interacting RTP's on the line [19,[30][31][32][33][34][35], and harmonic chains [36,37]. Recent exact solutions have also been obtained for some specific many-particle models on a lattice with contact interactions [38][39][40].…”