Inertial active ratchet: Simulation versus theory.

Abstract

We present the inertial active dynamics of an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck particle in a piecewise sawtooth ratchet potential. Using the Langevin simulation and matrix continued fraction method (MCFM), the particle transport, steady-state diffusion, and coherence in transport are investigated in different parameter regimes of the model. Spatial asymmetry is found to be a key criterion for the possibility of directed transport in the ratchet. The MCFM results for net particle current of overdamped dynamics of the particle agree well with the simulation results. The simulated particle trajectories for the inertial dynamics and the corresponding position and velocity distribution functions reveal that the system passes through an activity-induced transition in the transport from the running phase to the locked phase of the dynamics. This is further corroborated by the mean square displacement (MSD) calculations, where the MSD gets suppressed with increase in the persistent duration of activity or self-propulsion in the medium and finally approaches zero for a very large value of self propulsion time. The nonmonotonic behavior of the particle current and Péclet number with self-propulsion time confirms that the particle transport and its coherence can be enhanced or reduced by fine tuning the persistent duration of activity. Moreover, for intermediate ranges of self-propulsion time as well as mass of the particle, even though the particle current shows a pronounced unusual maximum with mass, there is no enhancement in the Péclet number, instead the Péclet number decreases with mass, confirming the degradation of coherence in transport.