Ratchet Effect and Nonlinear Transport for Particles on Random Substrates with Crossed ac Drives

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates through simulations that particles on random substrates can exhibit novel nonlinear transport phenomena, including a transverse ratchet effect and velocity overshoot, driven by combined ac and dc drives.

Contribution

It introduces the observation of a transverse ratchet effect and velocity overshoot in particles on disordered substrates under combined ac and dc drives, highlighting symmetry-breaking mechanisms.

Findings

Transverse ratchet effect induced by circular ac drive

Velocity overshoot where dc velocity exceeds that of pure dc drive

Dynamical reordering transition with increasing ac amplitude

Abstract

We show in simulations that overdamped interacting particles in two dimensions with a randomly disordered substrate can exhibit novel nonequilibrium transport phenomena including a transverse ratchet effect, where a combined dc drive and circular ac drive produce a drift velocity in the direction transverse to the applied dc drive. The random disorder does not break any global symmetry; however, in two dimensions, symmetry breaking occurs due to the chirality of the circular drive. In addition to inducing the transverse ratchet effect, increasing the ac amplitude also strongly affects the longitudinal velocity response and can produce what we term an overshoot effect where the longitudinal dc velocity is higher in the presence of the ac drive than it would be for a dc drive alone. We also find a dynamical reordering transition upon increasing the ac amplitude. In the absence of a dc drive, it is possible to obtain a ratchet effect when the combined ac drives produce particle orbits that break a reflection symmetry. In this case, as the ac amplitude increases, current reversals can occur. These effects may be observable for vortices in type II superconductors as well as for colloids interacting with random substrates.