Weakly nonlinear dynamics of a chemically active particle near the threshold for spontaneous motion. II. History-dependent motion

Abstract

We develop a reduced model for the slow unsteady dynamics of an isotropic chemically active particle near the threshold for spontaneous motion. Building on the steady theory developed in part I of this series, we match a weakly nonlinear expansion valid on the particle scale with a leading-order approximation in a larger-scale unsteady remote region, where the particle acts as a moving point source of diffusing concentration. The resulting amplitude equation for the velocity of the particle includes a term representing the interaction of the particle with its own concentration wake in the remote region, which can be expressed as a time integral over the history of the particle motion, allowing efficient simulation and theoretical analysis of fully three-dimensional unsteady problems. To illustrate how to use the model, we study the effects of a weak force acting on the particle, including the stability of the steady states and how the velocity vector realigns towards the stable one, neither of which previous axisymmetric and steady models were able to capture. This unsteady formulation could also be applied to most of the other perturbation scenarios studied in part I as well as the dynamics of interacting active particles.