Harmonic chain driven by active Rubin bath: transport properties and steady-state correlations

Abstract

Characterizing the properties of an extended system driven by active reservoirs is a question of increasing importance. Here, we address this question in two steps. We start by investigating the dynamics of a probe particle connected to an ‘active Rubin bath’: a linear chain of overdamped run-and-tumble particles. We derive exact analytical expressions for the effective noise and dissipation kernels, acting on the probe and show that the active nature of the bath leads to a modified fluctuation–dissipation relation. In the next step, we study the properties of an activity-driven system, modelled by a chain of harmonic oscillators connected to two such active reservoirs at the two ends. We show that the system reaches a non-equilibrium stationary state (NESS), remarkably different from that generated due to a thermal gradient. We characterize this NESS by computing the kinetic temperature profile, spatial and temporal velocity correlations of the oscillators, and the average energy current flowing through the system. It turns out that the activity drive leads to the emergence of two characteristic length-scales, proportional to the activities of the reservoirs. Strong signatures of activity are also manifest in the anomalous short-time decay of the velocity autocorrelations. Finally, we find that the energy current shows a non-monotonic dependence on the activity drive and reversal in direction, corroborating previous findings.