Chemokinetic scattering, trapping, and avoidance of active Brownian particles

Abstract

We present a theory of chemokinetic search agents that regulate directional fluctuations according to distance from a target. A dynamic scattering effect reduces the probability to penetrate regions with high fluctuations and thus search success for agents that respond instantaneously to positional cues. In contrast, agents with internal states that initially suppress chemokinesis can exploit scattering to increase their probability to find the target. Using matched asymptotics between the case of diffusive and ballistic search, we obtain analytic results beyond Fox' colored noise approximation.