2025/05/28 by Molla, Md Aquib, Goswami, Sanchari, Sen, Parongama
#Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.22262
We study the fate of a forager who searches for food performing simple random walk on lattices. The forager consumes the available food on the site it visits and leaves it depleted but can survive up to S steps without food. We introduce the concept of inertia in the dynamics which allows the forager to rest with probability p upon consumption of food. The parameter p significantly affects the lifetime of the forager, showing that the inertia can be beneficial for the forager for chosen parameter values. The study of various other quantities reveals interesting scaling behavior with p and also departure from usual diffusive behavior for 0.5 < p < 1. In addition to numerical approach, the problem has also been studied with analytical approach in one dimension and the results agree reasonably well.