Exact stationary state of a run-and-tumble particle with three internal states in a harmonic trap
Urna Basu, Satya N. Majumdar, Alberto Rosso, Sanjib Sabhapandit, Grégory Schehr
Abstract
Abstract We study the motion of a one-dimensional run-and-tumble particle with three discrete internal states in the presence of a harmonic trap of stiffness The three internal states, corresponding to positive, negative and zero velocities respectively, evolve following a jump process with rate . We compute the stationary position distribution exactly for arbitrary values of and which turns out to have a finite support on the real line. We show that the distribution undergoes a shape-transition as is changed. For the distribution has a double-concave shape and shows algebraic divergences with an exponent both at the origin and at the boundaries. For the position distribution becomes convex, vanishing at the boundaries and with a single, finite, peak at the origin. We also show that for the special case the distribution shows a logarithmic divergence near the origin while saturating to a constant value at the boundaries.