arXiv subjects

Pietro Luigi Muzzeddu

Publications and source records attributed to Pietro Luigi Muzzeddu.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Unifying hydrodynamic theory for motility-regulated active matter: from single particles to interacting polymers

Understanding how microscopic motility shapes emergent collective behaviors is a challenging task in active matter, especially when self-propulsion is regulated by external cues or via quorum-sensing interactions. To address this problem, we derive a closed hydrodynamics for scalar active matter with spatially-regulated motility, under general hypotheses for the microscopic dynamics of the particles' orientations. We show that, at large scales, the contribution of the latter is entirely captured by the autocorrelation tensor of the orientations. This allows us to establish a macroscopic equivalence within a broad class of motility-regulated active systems, from single particles to active polymers. Our formalism allows us to reveal a new form of motility-induced phase separation for quorum-sensing active polymers, which we term anti-MIPS, where dense phases exhibit enhanced activity relative to dilute regions. Our theory shows that anti-MIPS generically arises for motility-regulated agents with internal structure, uncovering the existence of several distinct transition pathways.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2026

Multiscale perturbative approach to active matter with motility regulation

We present a coarse-graining method applicable to dry scalar active matter with motility regulation. Our approach, based on a multiscale perturbative expansion of the backward Kolmogorov equation, does not rely on any specific microscopic dynamics for the particles' orientations. Its generality allows us to address different forms of motility regulation, from space-dependent self-propulsion speed to taxis, and to extend the analysis to a class of non-Markovian orientational dynamics. Furthermore, we identify general conditions on the microscopic dynamics that ensure the existence of an effective large-scale equilibrium regime. When the latter are violated, our theoretical framework is able to quantitatively capture the emergence of large-scale particle currents. We directly apply our coarse-grained theory to several models of self-propelled agents, ranging from single particles to active polymers, and test our analytical predictions with numerical simulations. Finally, we show that our theory naturally extends to active matter with density-mediated interactions, such as quorum sensing, with potential applications to self-organizing soft materials.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2025

Structure and dynamics of a Rouse polymer in a fluctuating correlated medium

We study the static and dynamical properties of a harmonically confined Rouse polymer coupled to a fluctuating correlated medium, which affect each other reciprocally during their stochastic evolution. The medium is modeled by a scalar Gaussian field which can feature modes with slow relaxation and long-range spatial correlations. We show that these modes affect the long-time behavior of the average position of the center of mass of the polymer, which, after a displacement, turns out to relax algebraically towards its equilibrium value. This is a manifestation of the non-Markovian nature of the effective evolution of the position of the center of mass, once the degrees of freedom of the medium have been integrated out. In contrast, we show that the coupling to the medium speeds up the relaxation of higher Rouse modes. We further characterize the typical size of the polymer as a function of its polymerization degree and of the correlation length of the medium, particularly when the system is driven out of equilibrium via the application of a constant external driving force. Finally, we study the response of a linear polymer to a tensile force acting on its terminal monomers.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2025

Active Transport of Cargo-Carrying and Interconnected Chiral Particles

Directed motion up a concentration gradient is crucial for the survival and maintenance of numerous biological systems, such as sperms moving towards an egg during fertilization or ciliates moving towards a food source. In these systems, chirality - manifested as a rotational torque - plays a vital role in facilitating directed motion. While systematic studies of active molecules in activity gradients exist, the effect of chirality remains little studied. In this study, we examine the simplest case of a chiral active particle connected to a passive particle in a spatially varying activity field. We demonstrate that this minimal setup can exhibit rich emergent tactic behaviors, with the chiral torque serving as the tuning parameter. Notably, when the chiral torque is sufficiently large, even a small passive particle enables the system to display the desired accumulation behavior. Our results further show that in the dilute limit, this desired accumulation behavior persists despite the presence of excluded volume effects. Additionally, interconnected chiral active particles exhibit emergent chemotaxis beyond a critical chain length, with trimers and longer chains exhibiting strong accumulation at sufficiently high chiral torques. This study provides valuable insights into the design principles of hybrid bio-molecular devices of the future.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2024

Transport of molecules via polymerization in chemical gradients

The transport of molecules for chemical reactions is critically important in various cellular biological processes. Despite thermal diffusion being prevalent in many biochemical processes, it is unreliable for any sort of directed transport or preferential accumulation of molecules. In this paper we propose a strategy for directed motion in which the molecules are transported by active carriers via polymerization. This transport is facilitated by chemical/activity gradients which generate an effective drift of the polymers. By marginalizing out the active degrees of freedom of the system, we obtain an effective Fokker-Planck equation for the Rouse modes of such active-passive hybrid polymers. In particular, we solve for the steady state distribution of the center of mass and its mean first passage time to reach an intended destination. We focus on how the arrangement of active units within the polymer affect its steady-state and dynamic behaviour and how they can be optimized to achieve high accumulation or rapid motility.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2024

Self-diffusion anomalies of an odd tracer in soft-core media

Odd-diffusive systems, characterised by broken time-reversal and/or parity symmetry, have recently been shown to display counterintuitive features such as interaction-enhanced dynamics in the dilute limit. Here we we extend the investigation to the high-density limit of an odd tracer embedded in a soft-Gaussian core medium (GCM) using a field-theoretic approach based on the Dean-Kawasaki equation. Our theory reveals that interactions can enhance the dynamics of an odd tracer even in dense systems. We demonstrate that oddness results in a complete reversal of the well-known self-diffusion ($D_\mathrm{s}$) anomaly of the GCM. Ordinarily, $D_\mathrm{s}$ exhibits a non-monotonic trend with increasing density, approaching but remaining below the interaction-free diffusion, $D_0$, ($D_\mathrm{s} < D_0$) so that $D_\mathrm{s} \uparrow D_0$ at high densities. In contrast, for an odd tracer, self-diffusion is enhanced ($D_\mathrm{s}> D_0$) and the GCM anomaly is inverted, displaying $D_\mathrm{s} \downarrow D_0$ at high densities. The transition between the standard and reversed GCM anomaly is governed by the tracer's oddness, with a critical oddness value at which the tracer diffuses as a free particle ($D_\mathrm{s} \approx D_0$) across all densities. We validate our theoretical predictions with Brownian dynamics simulations, finding strong agreement between the two.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2024

Migration and separation of polymers in non-uniform active baths

Polymer-like structures are ubiquitous in nature and synthetic materials. Their configurational and migration properties are often affected by crowded environments leading to non-thermal fluctuations. Here, we study an ideal Rouse chain in contact with a non-homogeneous active bath, characterized by the presence of active self-propelled agents which exert time-correlated forces on the chain. By means of a coarse-graining procedure, we derive an effective evolution for the center of mass of the chain and show its tendency to migrate towards and preferentially localize in regions of high/low bath activity depending on the model parameters. In particular, we demonstrate that an active bath with non-uniform activity can be used to separate efficiently polymeric species with different lengths and/or connectivity.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2023

Taxis of cargo-carrying microswimmers in traveling activity waves

Many fascinating properties of biological active matter crucially depend on the capacity of constituting entities to perform directed motion, e.g., molecular motors transporting vesicles inside cells or bacteria searching for food. While much effort has been devoted to mimicking biological functions in synthetic systems, such as transporting a cargo to a targeted zone, theoretical studies have primarily focused on single active particles subject to various spatial and temporal stimuli. Here we study the behavior of a self-propelled particle carrying a passive cargo in a travelling activity wave and show that this active-passive dimer displays a rich, emergent tactic behavior. For cargoes with low mobility, the dimer always drifts in the direction of the wave propagation. For highly-mobile cargoes, instead, the dimer can also drift against the traveling wave. The transition between these two tactic behaviors is controlled by the ratio between the frictions of the cargo and the microswimmer. In slow activity waves the dimer can perform an active surfing of the wave maxima, with an average drift velocity equal to the wave speed. These analytical predictions, which we confirm by numerical simulations, might be useful for the future efficient design of bio-hybrid microswimmers.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2022

Active chiral molecules in activity gradients

While the behavior of active colloidal molecules is well studied by now for a constant activity, the effect of activity gradients is much less understood. Here we explore one of the simplest molecules in activity gradients, namely active chiral dimers composed of two particles with opposite active torques of the same magnitude. We show analytically that with increasing torque, the dimer switches its behavior from antichemotactic to chemotactic. The origin of the emergent chemotaxis is the cooperative exploration of activity gradient by the two particles. While one of the particles moves into higher activity regions, the other moves towards lower activity region resulting in a net bias in the direction of higher activity. We do a comparative study of chiral active particles with charged Brownian particles under magnetic field and show that despite the fundamental similarity in terms of their odd-diffusive behavior, their dynamics and chemotactic behavior are generally not equivalent. We demonstrate this explicitly in a dimer composed of oppositely charged active particles, which remains antichemotactic for any magnetic field.

cond-mat.soft↗