Superdiffusion and antidiffusion in an aligned active suspension
Lokrshi Prawar Dadhichi, Suvendra K. Sahoo, K. Vijay Kumar, Sriram Ramaswamy
Published: 2025/10/1
Abstract
We show theoretically that an imposed uniaxial anisotropy leads to new universality classes for the dynamics of active particles suspended in a viscous fluid. In the homogeneous state, their concentration relaxes superdiffusively, stirred by the long-ranged flows generated by its own fluctuations, as confirmed by our numerical simulations. Increasing activity leads to an anisotropic diffusive instability, driven by an active contribution to the particle current proportional to the local curvature of the suspension velocity profile.