Tracer dynamics in the active random average process

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of tracer particles in the random average process (RAP), a single-file system in one dimension. In addition to the position, every particle possesses an internal spin variable σ(t) that can alternate between two values, ±1, at a constant rate γ. Physically, the value of σ(t) dictates the direction of motion of the corresponding particle and, for finite γ, every particle performs non-Markovian active dynamics. Herein, we study the effect of this non-Markovian behavior in the fluctuations and correlations of the positions of tracer particles. We analytically show that the variance of the position of a tagged particle grows sub-diffusively as ∼ζqt at large times for the quenched uniform initial conditions. While this sub-diffusive growth is identical to that of the Markovian/non-persistent RAP, the coefficient ζq is rather different and bears the signature of the persistent motion of active particles through higher-point correlations (unlike in the Markovian case). Similarly, for the annealed (steady-state) initial conditions, we find that the variance scales as ∼ζat at large times, with the coefficient ζa once again different from the non-persistent case. Although both ζ q and ζa individually depart from their Markovian counterparts, their ratio ζa/ζq is still equal to 2 , a condition observed for other diffusive single-file systems. This condition turns out to be true even in the strongly active regimes, as corroborated by extensive simulations and calculations. Finally, we study the correlation between the positions of two tagged particles in both quenched uniform and annealed initial conditions. We verify all our analytical results using extensive numerical simulations.