Work

Memory signatures in path curvature of self-avoidant model particles are revealed by time delayed self mutual information

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Emergent behavior in active systems is a complex byproduct of local, often pairwise, interactions. One such interaction is self-avoidance, which experimentally can arise as a response to self-generated environmental signals; such experiments have inspired non-Markovian mathematical models. In previous work, we set out to find “hallmarks of self-avoidant memory" in a particle model for environmentally responsive swimming droplets. In our analysis, we found that transient self-trapping was a spatial hallmark of the particle’s self-avoidant memory response. The self-trapping results from the combined effects of behaviors at multiple scales: random reorientations, which occur on the diffusion scale, and the self-avoidant memory response, which occurs on the ballistic (and longer) timescales. In this work, we use the path curvature as it encodes the self-trapping response to estimate an “effective memory lifetime" by analyzing the decay of its time-delayed mutual information and subsequently determining the longevity of significant nonlinear correlations. This effective memory lifetime (EML) is longer in systems where the curvature is a product of both self-avoidance and random reorientations as compared to systems without self-avoidance.

Source: Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

DOI: 10.17615/qcw2-dm94

Authors: Daftari, Katherine, Newhall, Katherine A.

Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Language: English

Topic: Complex Systems and Dynamics

Subfield: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Science Foundation

Award: Stochastic Dynamics on Energy Landscapes with Applications in Physics and Biology