Directional cues affect the collective behaviour of Self propelled particles in one dimension

TL;DR

This paper investigates how directional cues from quenched disorder influence the collective behavior of one-dimensional self-propelled particles, affecting their ordering, clustering, and localization.

Contribution

It introduces a microscopic and coarse-grained model to analyze the impact of disorder on particle ordering and clustering in one dimension.

Findings

Disorder causes the size of ordered clusters to decay algebraically.

Presence of disorder breaks large clusters into smaller ones.

Disorder leads to particle localization and high-density regions.

Abstract

This study explores the effect of quenched disorder on the characteristic of self-propelled particles in one-dimension. Here,particles interact with disorder which serve as directional cues. The study investigates how the density of the disorder influence the emergence of ordering and clustering in the collection of the self propelled particles. We introduce the microscopic model as well as corresponding coarse-grained equations of motion for the local density and the orientation of particle. Disorder affects the macroscopic ordering in the system, the size of the ordered clusters decays algebraically with disorder. Further, the disorder also affects the clustering of particles; in the presence of disorder, a big macroscopic cluster breaks into small clusters, leads to the localization of particles around it and results in high density around the disorder.