title: Microscopic theory for negative differential mobility in crowded environments.
abstract: We study the behavior of the stationary velocity of a driven particle in an environment of mobile hard-core obstacles. Based on a lattice gas model, we demonstrate analytically that the drift velocity can exhibit a nonmonotonic dependence on the applied force, and show quantitatively that such negative differential mobility (NDM), observed in various physical contexts, is controlled by both the density and diffusion time scale of the obstacles. Our study unifies recent numerical and analytical results obtained in specific regimes, and makes it possible to determine analytically the region of the full parameter space where NDM occurs. These results suggest that NDM could be a generic feature of biased (or active) transport in crowded environments.
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR 7600, LPTMC, F-75005 Paris, France and CNRS, UMR 7600, Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de la Matiére Condensée, F-75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Bénichou
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR 7600, LPTMC, F-75005 Paris, France and CNRS, UMR 7600, Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de la Matiére Condensée, F-75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Illien
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR 7600, LPTMC, F-75005 Paris, France and CNRS, UMR 7600, Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de la Matiére Condensée, F-75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Oshanin
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR 7600, LPTMC, F-75005 Paris, France and CNRS, UMR 7600, Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de la Matiére Condensée, F-75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sarracino
authors.affiliation: Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR 7600, LPTMC, F-75005 Paris, France and CNRS, UMR 7600, Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de la Matiére Condensée, F-75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Voituriez