Optimal navigation of microswimmers in complex and noisy environments

Journal article

We analyze long-time correlated Brownian motion and scaled Brownian motion on the surface of the two dimensional sphere $\mathbb{S}^{2}$. Due to the geometric effects induced by the $\mathbb{S}^{2}$ curvature, such correlations collude with specific dynamics (\emph{navigation strategies}) on the manifold topology to originate rich transport properties. We focus our study to two classes of navigation strategies: One induced by the specific set of coordinates chosen for $\mathbb{S}^2$ which defines a fixed frame of reference; in particular, we chose the basis induced by spherical coordinates. We find that contrary to what occurs in the absence of correlations non-equilibrium stationary distributions are attained. We elucidate an analogy of our results with those observed of fractional Brownian motion in confined by reflecting walls in one and two dimensions. In contrast, when the navigation strategy chosen corresponds to a frame of reference moving with the particle as does the Frenet-Serret system, then the equilibrium uniform distribution on the sphere is attained. In both cases, the relaxation times towards the stationary distribution depend on the particular value of the Hurst parameter. We show that scaled Brownian motion on $\mathbb{S}^2$ is independent of the navigation strategy and we find a good agreement between the analytical calculations obtained from the solution of a time-dependent diffusion equation on $\mathbb{S}^{2}$ and the numerical results obtained from our method to generate ensemble of trajectories.Comment: The statistics of Fractional Brownian motion and of scaled Brownian motion are analyzed when motion is constrained to surface of a spher

Authors: Piro, L; Mahault, B; Golestanian, R

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Journal: New Journal of Physics
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 9
• Pages: 093037-093037
• Publication date: 2022-09-28
• DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/ac9079
• EISSN: 1367-2630
• ISSN: 1367-2630
• Language: English
• Keywords: Aerospace engineering; Statistical physics; Classical mechanics; Physics