New paper in PRL:
Marco Baldovin, David Guéry-Odelin, and Emmanuel Trizac
“Control of Active Brownian Particles: An Exact Solution”
Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 118302 (2023)
Control of stochastic systems is a challenging open problem in statistical physics, with a wealth of potential applications from biology to granulates. Unlike most cases investigated so far, we aim here at controlling a genuinely out-of-equilibrium system, the two dimensional active Brownian particles model in a harmonic potential, a paradigm for the study of self-propelled bacteria. We search for protocols for the driving parameters (stiffness of the potential and activity of the particles) bringing the system from an initial passivelike steady state to a final activelike one, within a chosen time interval. The exact analytical results found for this prototypical model of self-propelled particles brings control techniques to a wider class of out-of-equilibrium systems.
Marco Baldovin 