Velocity anomaly of a driven tracer in a confined crowded environment

Exact time dependence of the cumulants of a tracer position in a dense lattice gas

We develop a general method to calculate the exact time dependence of the cumulants of the position of a tracer particle in a dense lattice gas of hardcore particles. More precisely, we calculate the cumulant-generating function associated with the position of a tagged particle at arbitrary time, and at leading order in the density of vacancies on the lattice. In particular, our approach gives access to the short-time dynamics of the cumulants of the tracer position, a regime in which few results are known. The generality of our approach is demonstrated by showing that it goes beyond the case of a symmetric 1D random walk and covers the important situations of (1) a biased tracer, (2) comblike structures, and (3) d-dimensional situations.

Active microrheology in corrugated channels: Comparison of thermal and colloidal baths

HYPOTHESIS

The dynamics of colloidal suspension confined within porous materials strongly differs from that in the bulk. In particular, within porous materials, the presence of boundaries with complex shapes entangles the longitudinal and transverse degrees of freedom inducing a coupling between the transport of the suspension and the density inhomogeneities induced by the walls.

METHOD

Colloidal suspension confined within model porous media are characterized by means of active microrheology where a net force is applied on a single colloid (tracer particle) whose transport properties are then studied. The trajectories provided by active microrheology are exploited to determine the local transport coefficients. In order to asses the role of the colloid-colloid interactions we compare the case of a tracer embedded in a colloidal suspension to the case of a tracer suspended in an ideal bath.

FINDING

Our results show that the friction coefficient increases and the passage time distribution widens upon increasing the corrugation of the channel. These features are obtained for a tracer suspended in a (thermalized) colloidal bath as well as for the case of an ideal thermal bath. These results highlight the relevance of the confinement on the transport and show a mild dependence on the colloidal/thermal bath. Finally, we rationalize our numerical results with a semi-analytical model. Interestingly, the predictions of the model are quantitatively reliable for mild external forces, hence providing a reliable tool for predicting the transport across porous materials.

Microscopic Theory for the Diffusion of an Active Particle in a Crowded Environment

We calculate the diffusion coefficient of an active tracer in a schematic crowded environment, represented as a lattice gas of passive particles with hardcore interactions. Starting from the master equation of the problem, we put forward a closure approximation that goes beyond trivial mean field and provides the diffusion coefficient for an arbitrary density of crowders in the system. We show that our approximation is accurate for a very wide range of parameters, and that it correctly captures numerous nonequilibrium effects, which are the signature of the activity in the system. In addition to the determination of the diffusion coefficient of the tracer, our approach allows us to characterize the perturbation of the environment induced by the displacement of the active tracer. Finally, we consider the asymptotic regimes of low and high densities, in which the expression of the diffusion coefficient of the tracer becomes explicit, and which we argue to be exact.

Attraction and condensation of driven tracers in a narrow channel

Emergent bath-mediated attraction and condensation arise when multiple particles are simultaneously driven through an equilibrated bath under geometric constraints. While such scenarios are observed in a variety of nonequilibrium phenomena with an abundance of experimental and numerical evidence, little quantitative understanding of how these interactions arise is currently available. Here we approach the problem by studying the behavior of two driven "tracer" particles, propagating through a bath in a 1D lattice with excluded-volume interactions. We apply the mean-field approximation to analytically explore the mechanism responsible for the tracers' emergent interactions and compute the resulting effective attractive potential. This mechanism is then numerically shown to extend to a realistic model of hard driven Brownian disks confined to a narrow 2D channel.

Driven spheres, ellipsoids and rods in explicitly modeled polymer solutions

Understanding the transport of driven nano- and micro-particles in complex fluids is of relevance for many biological and technological applications. Here we perform hydrodynamic multiparticle collision dynamics simulations of spherical and elongated particles driven through polymeric fluids containing different concentrations of polymers. We determine the mean particle velocities which are larger than expected from Stokes law for all particle shapes and polymer densities. Furthermore we measure the fluid flow fields and local polymer density and polymer conformation around the particles. We find that polymer-depleted regions close to the particles are responsible for an apparent tangential slip velocity which accounts for the measured flow fields and transport velocities. A simple two-layer fluid model gives a good match to the simulation results.

Tracer diffusion in crowded narrow channels

We summarise different results on the diffusion of a tracer particle in lattice gases of hard-core particles with stochastic dynamics, which are confined to narrow channels-single-files, comb-like structures and quasi-one-dimensional channels with the width equal to several particle diameters. We show that in such geometries a surprisingly rich, sometimes even counter-intuitive, behaviour emerges, which is absent in unbounded systems. This is well-documented for the anomalous diffusion in single-files. Less known is the anomalous dynamics of a tracer particle in crowded branching single-files-comb-like structures, where several kinds of anomalous regimes take place. In narrow channels, which are broader than single-files, one encounters a wealth of anomalous behaviours in the case where the tracer particle is subject to a regular external bias: here, one observes an anomaly in the temporal evolution of the tracer particle velocity, super-diffusive at transient stages, and ultimately a giant diffusive broadening of fluctuations in the position of the tracer particle, as well as spectacular multi-tracer effects of self-clogging of narrow channels. Interactions between a biased tracer particle and a confined crowded environment also produce peculiar patterns in the out-of-equilibrium distribution of the environment particles, very different from the ones appearing in unbounded systems. For moderately dense systems, a surprising effect of a negative differential mobility takes place, such that the velocity of a biased tracer particle can be a non-monotonic function of the force. In some parameter ranges, both the velocity and the diffusion coefficient of a biased tracer particle can be non-monotonic functions of the density. We also survey different results obtained for a tracer particle diffusion in unbounded systems, which will permit a reader to have an exhaustively broad picture of the tracer diffusion in crowded environments.

N-tag probability law of the symmetric exclusion process

The symmetric exclusion process (SEP), in which particles hop symmetrically on a discrete line with hard-core constraints, is a paradigmatic model of subdiffusion in confined systems. This anomalous behavior is a direct consequence of strong spatial correlations induced by the requirement that the particles cannot overtake each other. Even if this fact has been recognized qualitatively for a long time, up to now there has been no full quantitative determination of these correlations. Here we study the joint probability distribution of an arbitrary number of tagged particles in the SEP. We determine analytically its large-time limit for an arbitrary density of particles, and its full dynamics in the high-density limit. In this limit, we obtain the time-dependent large deviation function of the problem and unveil a universal scaling form shared by the cumulants.

Time-dependent perpendicular fluctuations in the driven lattice Lorentz gas

We present results for the fluctuations of the displacement of a tracer particle on a planar lattice pulled by a step force in the presence of impenetrable, immobile obstacles. The fluctuations perpendicular to the applied force are evaluated exactly in first order of the obstacle density for arbitrarily strong pulling and all times. The complex time-dependent behavior is analyzed in terms of the diffusion coefficient, local exponent, and the non-Skellam parameter, which quantifies deviations from the dynamics on the lattice in the absence of obstacles. The non-Skellam parameter along the force is analyzed in terms of an asymptotic model and reveals a power-law growth for intermediate times.

Time-Dependent Fluctuations and Superdiffusivity in the Driven Lattice Lorentz Gas

We consider a tracer particle on a lattice in the presence of immobile obstacles. Starting from equilibrium, a force pulling on the particle is switched on, driving the system to a new stationary state. We solve for the complete transient dynamics of the fluctuations of the tracer position along the direction of the force. The analytic result, exact in first order of the obstacle density and for arbitrarily strong driving, is compared to stochastic simulations. Upon strong driving, the fluctuations grow superdiffusively for intermediate times; however, they always become diffusive in the stationary state. The diffusion constant is nonanalytic for small driving and is enhanced by orders of magnitude by increasing the force.

Anomalous diffusion and diffusion anomaly in confined Janus dumbbells

Self-assembly and dynamical properties of Janus nanoparticles have been studied by molecular dynamic simulations. The nanoparticles are modeled as dimers and they are confined between two flat parallel plates to simulate a thin film. One monomer from the dumbbells interacts by a standard Lennard-Jones potential and the other by a two-length scales shoulder potential, typically used for anomalous fluids. Here, we study the effects of removing the Brownian effects, typical from colloidal systems immersed in aqueous solution, and consider a molecular system, without the drag force and the random collisions from the Brownian motion. Self-assembly and diffusion anomaly are preserved in relation to the Brownian system. Additionally, a superdiffusive regime associated to a collective reorientation in a highly structured phase is observed. Diffusion anomaly and anomalous diffusion are explained in the two length scale framework.

Stochastic cycle selection in active flow networks

Active biological flow networks pervade nature and span a wide range of scales, from arterial blood vessels and bronchial mucus transport in humans to bacterial flow through porous media or plasmodial shuttle streaming in slime molds. Despite their ubiquity, little is known about the self-organization principles that govern flow statistics in such nonequilibrium networks. Here we connect concepts from lattice field theory, graph theory, and transition rate theory to understand how topology controls dynamics in a generic model for actively driven flow on a network. Our combined theoretical and numerical analysis identifies symmetry-based rules that make it possible to classify and predict the selection statistics of complex flow cycles from the network topology. The conceptual framework developed here is applicable to a broad class of biological and nonbiological far-from-equilibrium networks, including actively controlled information flows, and establishes a correspondence between active flow networks and generalized ice-type models.

Field-induced superdiffusion and dynamical heterogeneity

By analyzing two kinetically constrained models of supercooled liquids we show that the anomalous transport of a driven tracer observed in supercooled liquids is another facet of the phenomenon of dynamical heterogeneity. We focus on the Fredrickson-Andersen and the Bertin-Bouchaud-Lequeux models. By numerical simulations and analytical arguments we demonstrate that the violation of the Stokes-Einstein relation and the field-induced superdiffusion observed during a long preasymptotic regime have the same physical origin: while a fraction of probes do not move, others jump repeatedly because they are close to local mobile regions. The anomalous fluctuations observed out of equilibrium in the presence of a pulling force ε,σ_{x}^{2}(t)=〈x_{ε}^{2}(t)〉-〈x_{ε}(t)〉^{2}∼t^{3/2}, which are accompanied by the asymptotic decay α_{ε}(t)∼t^{-1/2} of the non-Gaussian parameter from nontrivial values to zero, are due to the splitting of the probes population in the two (mobile and immobile) groups and to dynamical correlations, a mechanism expected to happen generically in supercooled liquids.

Active microrheology in active matter systems: Mobility, intermittency, and avalanches

We examine the mobility and velocity fluctuations of a driven particle moving through an active matter bath of self-mobile disks for varied density or area coverage and varied activity. We show that the driven particle mobility can exhibit nonmonotonic behavior that is correlated with distinct changes in the spatiotemporal structures that arise in the active media. We demonstrate that the probe particle velocity distributions exhibit specific features in the different dynamic regimes and identify an activity-induced uniform crystallization that occurs for moderate activity levels and is distinct from the previously observed higher activity cluster phase. The velocity distribution in the cluster phase has telegraph noise characteristics produced when the probe particle moves alternately through high-mobility areas that are in the gas state and low-mobility areas that are in the dense phase. For higher densities and large activities, the system enters what we characterize as an active jamming regime. Here the probe particle moves in intermittent jumps or avalanches that have power-law-distributed sizes that are similar to the avalanche distributions observed for nonactive disk systems near the jamming transition.