Abstract
In a system of colloidal inclusions suspended in an equilibrium bath of smaller particles, the particulate bath engenders effective, short-ranged, primarily attractive interactions between the inclusions, known as depletion interactions, that originate from the steric depletion of bath particles from the immediate vicinity of the inclusions. In a bath of active (self-propelled) particles, the nature of such bath-mediated interactions can qualitatively change from attraction to repulsion, and they become stronger in magnitude and range of action as compared with typical equilibrium depletion interactions, especially as the bath activity (particle self-propulsion) is increased. We study effective interactions mediated by a bath of active Brownian particles between two fixed, impenetrable, and disk-shaped inclusions in a planar (channel) confinement in two dimensions. Confinement is found to strongly influence the effective interaction between the inclusions, specifically by producing alternating interaction profiles with possible attractive and repulsive regions in sufficiently narrow channels. We study the dependence of the ensuing interactions on different system parameters and the orientational (parallel versus perpendicular) configuration of the inclusion pair relative to the channel walls. The confinement effects are largely regulated by the layering of active particles next to the surface boundaries, both of the inclusions and the channel walls that counteract one another in accumulating the active particles in their own proximities. In narrow channels, the combined effects due to the channel walls and the inclusions lead to peculiar structuring of active particles (reminiscent of wavelike interference patterns) within the channel.
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