Paper detail

Controlling the transport of active matter in disorderd lattices of asymmetrical obstacles

We investigate the transport of active matter system in the presence of a disordered square lattice of half-circles, which is built by removing a fraction of them from the initial full lattice. We consider no external field. We observe a spontaneous inversion of the net current, compared to the usual sense of such a current reported in previous papers, if the obstacle has the same diameter as the unit cell of the square lattice. If this diameter is smaller, there is no inversion. We show a calculation that reproduces our numerical results qualitatively, based on the argument that such effects are the results of the imbalance of particles traveling in the positive and the negative directions due to traps formed by the obstacles: for positive travelers the traps are the spaces between neighboring obstacles, while for negative travelers, they are the flat side of the obstacles.