Translational and Rotational Dynamics of a Self-Propelled Janus Probe in Crowded Environments

@article{theeyancheriTranslationalRotationalDynamics2020,
  title = {Translational and Rotational Dynamics of a Self-Propelled
                  {{Janus}} Probe in Crowded Environments},
  author = {Theeyancheri, Ligesh and Chaki, Subhasish and Samanta,
                  Nairhita and Goswami, Rohit and Chelakkot, Raghunath and
                  Chakrabarti, Rajarshi},
  date = {2020-08-05},
  journaltitle = {Soft Matter},
  shortjournal = {Soft Matter},
  publisher = {{The Royal Society of Chemistry;
                  http://web.archive.org/web/20200805122230/https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/sm/d0sm00339e}},
  issn = {1744-6848},
  doi = {10.1039/D0SM00339E},
  abstract = {We computationally investigate the dynamics of a
                  self-propelled Janus probe in crowded environments. The
                  crowding is caused by the presence of viscoelastic polymers or
                  non- viscoelastic disconnected monomers. Our simulations show
                  that the translational, as well as rotational mean square
                  displacements, have a distinctive three-step growth for fixed
                  values of self-propulsion force, and steadily increase with
                  self-propulsion, irrespective of the nature of the crowder. On
                  the other hand, in the absence of crowders, the rotational
                  dynamics of the Janus probe is independent of self-propulsion
                  force. On replacing the repulsive polymers with sticky ones,
                  translational and rotational mean square displacements of the
                  Janus probe show a sharp drop. Since different faces of a
                  Janus particle interact differently with the environment, we
                  show that the direction of self-propulsion also affects its
                  dynamics. The ratio of long-time translational and rotational
                  diffusivities of the self-propelled probe with a fixed
                  self-propulsion, when plotted against the area fraction of the
                  crowders, passes through a minima and at higher area fraction
                  merges to its value in the absence of the crowder. This points
                  towards the decoupling of translational and rotational
                  dynamics of the self-propelled probe at intermediate area
                  fraction of the crowders. However, such
                  translational-rotational decoupling is absent for passive
                  probes.},
  keywords = {journal},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  eprint = {2008.02089},
  eprinttype = {arxiv},
  langid = {english},
}