Brownian motion in a growing population of ballistic particles

TL;DR

This paper models how the motility of particles in a growing cell population changes over time by deriving an effective Langevin equation that accounts for density-dependent friction, validated through simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a density-dependent friction model and an effective Langevin equation for describing particle motility in a growing population, extending to systems with time-varying transport coefficients.

Findings

Effective Langevin equation matches simulation results

Density-dependent friction influences particle motility

Framework applicable to other time-varying transport systems

Abstract

We investigate the motility of a growing population of cells in a idealized setting: we consider a system of hard disks in which new particles are added according to prescribed growth kinetics, thereby dynamically changing the number density. As a result, the expected Brownian motion of the hard disks is modified. We compute the density-dependent friction of the hard disks and insert it in an effective Langevin equation to describe the system, assuming that the inter-collision time is smaller than the timescale of the growth. We find that the effective Langevin description captures the changes in motility in agreement with the simulation results. Our framework can be extended to other systems in which the transport coefficient varies with time.