English

Non-crossing run-and-tumble particles on a line

Statistical Mechanics 2019-07-17 v2 Soft Condensed Matter

Abstract

We study active particles performing independent run and tumble motion on an infinite line with velocities v0σ(t)v_0 \sigma(t), where σ(t)=±1\sigma(t) = \pm 1 is a dichotomous telegraphic noise with constant flipping rate γ\gamma. We first consider one particle in the presence of an absorbing wall at x=0x=0 and calculate the probability that it has survived up to time tt and is at position xx at time tt. We then consider two particles with independent telegraphic noises and compute exactly the probability that they do not cross up to time tt. Contrarily to the case of passive (Brownian) particles this two-RTP problem can not be reduced to a single RTP with an absorbing wall. Nevertheless, we are able to compute exactly the probability of no-crossing of two independent RTP's up to time tt and find that it decays at large time as t1/2t^{-1/2} with an amplitude that depends on the initial condition. The latter allows to define an effective length scale, analogous to the so called `` Milne extrapolation length'' in neutron scattering, which we demonstrate to be a fingerprint of the active dynamics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1902.06176,
  title  = {Non-crossing run-and-tumble particles on a line},
  author = {Pierre Le Doussal and Satya N. Majumdar and Gregory Schehr},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1902.06176},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

19 pages, 3 figures; revised version, Refs. added

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:42:48.138Z