Understanding Contagion Dynamics through Microscopic Processes in Active Brownian Particles

Abstract

Together with the universally recognized SIR model, several approaches have been employed to understand the contagious dynamics of interacting particles. Here, Active Brownian particles (ABP) are introduced to model the contagion dynamics of living agents that spread an infectious disease in space and time. Simulations were performed for several population densities and contagious rates. Our results show that ABP not only reproduces the time dependence observed in traditional SIR models, but also allows us to explore the critical densities, contagious radius, and random recovery times that facilitate the virus spread. Furthermore, we derive a first-principles analytical expression for the contagion rate in terms of microscopic parameters, without the assumption of free parameters as the classical SIR-based models. This approach offers a novel alternative to incorporate microscopic processes into the analysis of SIR-based models with applications in a wide range of biological systems.