Stochastic Heat Engine Using Multiple Interacting Active Particles

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a stochastic heat engine using multiple interacting active particles confined in a trap, where periodic modulation of wall steepness and particle activity induces work extraction, highlighting the complex thermodynamics involved.

Contribution

It introduces a novel active particle-based heat engine model with Vicsek-like interactions and analyzes how system parameters influence work output and efficiency.

Findings

Changing wall steepness and activity induces clustering and work extraction.

Work varies with activity, rotational diffusion, and Vicsek radius.

Efficiency definition is complex due to active matter thermodynamics.

Abstract

The area of stochastic heat engines using active particles has attracted a lot of attention recently. They have been shown to exhibit advantages over engines using passive particles. In this work, we use multiple self-propelling particles undergoing Vicsek-like aligning interaction as our working system. The particles are confined in a two-dimensional circular trap. The interplay between the confinement and the activity of the particles induces clustering. These clusters change their locations relative to the walls of the trap, when the wall steepness is varied with time. In this work we demonstrate that changing the steepness of the wall and the activity of the particles time-periodically can cause the system to act as an engine. In this setup, we study the variations in extracted work with the activity, rotational diffusion, and the Vicsek radius of individual particles. We also comment on the complications involved in the definition of the engine efficiency in accordance with the usual prescription of stochastic thermodynamics.