Active Matter in Lateral Parabolic Confinement: From Subdiffusion to Superdiffusion

In this work we studied the diffusive behavior of active brownian particles under lateral parabolic confinement. The results showed that we go from subdiffusion to ballistic motion as we vary the angular noise strength and confinement intensity. We argued that the subdiffusion regimes appear as consequence of the restricted space available for diffusion (achieved either through large confinement and/or large noise); we saw that when there are large confinement and noise intensity, a similar configuration to single file diffusion appears; on the other hand, normal and superdiffusive regimes may occur due to low noise (longer persistent motion), either through exploring a wider region around the potential minimum in the transverse direction (low confinement), or by forming independent clusters (high confinement).
6 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Physica A