Enhanced directionality of active processes in a viscoelastic bath
Biswajit Das, S. Paul, Sreekanth K Manikandan, Ayan Banerjee
Abstract
Abstract Active fluctuations are known to play a significant role in the intracellular transport of passive objects. However, the effect of viscoelasticity of the environment in shaping such processes is relatively less understood. Here, with a minimal experiment using a driven colloid in a viscoelastic bath, we show that viscoelasticity significantly increases the mean injected power to the passive object ( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>∼</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>50</mml:mn> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">%</mml:mi> </mml:math> compared to a viscous medium), for the same strength of the external driving. Additionally, we observe a notable reduction in negative work fluctuations across a wide range of driving amplitudes. These findings collectively suggest an enhanced directionality in driven processes within a viscoelastic bath, which we attribute to the emergence of interactions between the colloid and the viscoelastic medium.