Diffusion of active particles with angular velocity reversal

Kristian Stølevik Olsen

Published 2020-12-10, updated 2021-05-24Version 2

Biological and synthetic microswimmers display a wide range of swimming trajectories depending on driving forces and torques. In this paper we consider a simple overdamped model of self-propelled particles with a constant self-propulsion speed, but an angular velocity that varies in time. Specifically, we consider the case of both deterministic and stochastic angular velocity reversal, mimicking several synthetic active matter systems like propelled droplets. The orientational correlation function and effective diffusivity is studied using Langevin dynamics simulations and perturbative methods.