Memory-Induced Transport and Arrest in Flashing Ratchets: From Superdiffusion to Clustering

We investigate the transport properties of particles driven by colored noise in a flashing ratchet potential, focusing on both non-interacting and single-file interacting regimes. The model incorporates memory effects via a non-Markovian friction kernel, leading to superdiffusive dynamics and enhanced currents in the absence of interactions. However, when particles are constrained to single-file motion with hard-core repulsion, the same non-Markovian noise induces a dynamical transition: initial superdiffusion gives way to the formation of static clusters, ultimately suppressing net current. This transition occurs without a critical density and results from the interplay between noise persistence and the ratchet's potential. Our numerical results reveal a universal scaling behavior for the mean square displacement across densities, suggesting robustness of the clustering mechanism. These findings have potential implications for transport in crowded or confined systems such as colloidal suspensions, molecular motors in cellular environments, or microfluidic devices, where controlling noise and crowding can be used to tune transport efficiency.