Chemotaxis-Induced Anomalous Tracer Diffusion in Bacterial Suspensions

Chemotaxis, a basic and universal phenomenon among living organisms, directly controls the transport kinetics of active fluids such as swarming bacteria, but has not been considered when utilizing passive tracer to probe the nonequilibrium properties of such fluids. Here we present the first theoretical investigation of the diffusion dynamics of a chemoattractant-coated tracer in bacterial suspension, by developing a molecular dynamics model of bacterial chemotaxis. We demonstrate that the non-Gaussian statistics of full-coated tracer arises from the noises exerted by bacteria, which is athermal and exponentially correlated. Moreover, half-coated (Janus) tracer performs a composite random walk combining power-law-tail distributed Lu0027{e}vy flights with Brownian jiggling at low coating concentration, but undergoes an enhanced directional transport when coating concentration is high. Particularly, such transition is identified to be second-order, with a critical exponent 1.5 independent of bacterial density. Our findings reveal the fundamental nonequilibrium physics of active matter under external stimuli, and underscore the crucial role of asymmetrical environment in regulating the transport processes in biological systems.