Alignment interaction and band formation in assemblies of auto-chemorepulsive walkers

Abstract

Chemotaxis, i.e. motion generated by chemical gradients, is a motility mode shared by many living species that has been developed by evolution to optimize certain biological processes such as foraging or immune response. In particular, auto-chemotaxis refers to chemotaxis mediated by a cue produced by the chemotactic particle itself. Here, we investigate the collective behavior of auto-chemotactic particles that are repelled by the cue and therefore migrate preferentially towards low-concentration regions. To this end, we introduce a lattice model inspired by the true self-avoiding walk which reduces to the Keller-Segels model in the continuous limit, for which we describe the rich phase behavior. We first rationalize a the chemically-mediated alignment interaction between walkers in the limit of stationary concentration fields, and then describe the various large-scale structures that can spontaneously form and the conditions for them to emerge, among which we find stable bands traveling at constant speed in the direction transverse to the band.