THE EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL SPECIAL TOPICS Diffusion in different models of active Brownian

Abstract. Active Brownian particles (ABP) have served as phenomenological models of self-propelled motion in biology. We study the effective diffusion coeffi-cient of two one-dimensional ABP models (simplified depot model and Rayleigh-Helmholtz model) differing in their nonlinear friction functions. Depending on the choice of the friction function the diffusion coefficient does or does not attain a minimum as a function of noise intensity. We furthermore discuss the case of an additional bias breaking the left-right symmetry of the system. We show that this bias induces a drift and that it generally reduces the diffusion coefficient. For a finite range of values of the bias, both models can exhibit a maximum in the diffusion coefficient vs. noise intensity.