English

Diffraction and interference with run-and-tumble particles

Statistical Mechanics 2022-08-17 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory Quantum Physics

Abstract

Run-and-tumble particles, frequently considered today for modeling bacterial locomotion, naturally appear outside a biological context as well, e.g. for producing waves in the telegraph process. Here, we use a wave function to drive their propulsion and tumbling. Such quantum-active motion realizes a jittery motion of Dirac electrons (as in the famous Zitterbewegung): the Dirac electron is a run-and-tumble particle, where the tumbling is between chiralities. We visualize the trajectories in diffraction and double slit experiments for electrons. In particular, that yields the time-of-arrival statistics of the electrons at the screen. Finally, we observe that away from pure quantum guidance, run-and-tumble particles with suitable spacetime-dependent parameters produce an interference pattern as well.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2106.09568,
  title  = {Diffraction and interference with run-and-tumble particles},
  author = {Christian Maes and Kasper Meerts and Ward Struyve},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.09568},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

25 pages, 43 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-24T03:19:10.559Z