Single active particle engine utilizing a non-reciprocal coupling between particle's position and self-propulsion

We recently argued that a self-propelled particle is formally equivalent to a system consisting of two subsystems coupled by a non-reciprocal interaction [Phys. Rev. E 100, 050603® (2019)]. Here we show that this non-reciprocal coupling allows to extract useful work from a single self-propelled particle maintained at constant temperature, by using an aligning interaction to influence correlations between the particle’s position and self-propulsion.