Dynamical crossovers and correlations in a harmonic chain of active particles

Abstract

We explore the dynamics of a tracer in an active particle harmonic chain, investigating the influence of interactions. Our analysis involves calculating mean-squared displacements (MSDs) and space-time correlations through Green's function techniques and numerical simulations. Depending on chain characteristics, i.e., different time scales determined by interaction stiffness and persistence of activity, tagged-particle MSDs exhibit ballistic, diffusive, and single-file diffusion (SFD) scaling over time, with crossovers explained by our analytic expressions. Our results reveal transitions in bulk particle displacement distributions from an early-time bimodal to late-time Gaussian, passing through regimes of unimodal distributions with finite support and negative excess kurtosis and longer-tailed distributions with positive excess kurtosis. The distributions exhibit data collapse, aligning with ballistic, diffusive, and SFD scaling in the appropriate time regimes. However, at much longer times, the distributions become Gaussian. Finally, we derive analytic expressions for steady-state static and dynamic two-point displacement correlations. We verify these from simulations and highlight the differences from the equilibrium results.