Abstract
Many physical, chemical or biological problems can be rephrased as search
processes, involving a searcher and a target of unknown position. We show that
intermittent search strategies, alternating active search phases and non
reactive displacement phases, are universal for a wide class of problems
involving search time optimization. More precisely, we address the general
question of determining in which cases a searcher should, or should not,
interrupt his search activity by losing time in non reactive phases of mere
displacement, and which durations of each phase optimize the search time. Using
a representative analytical model, we show that intermittent strategies do
optimize the search time as soon as the target is difficult to detect, and we
explicitly give the optimal search strategies, which depend on the memory skills
of the searcher.
References:\\
1. M. Coppey, O. Benichou, R. Voituriez, and M. Moreau, Biophys. J. 87, 1640 (2004)
2. O. Benichou, M. Coppey, M. Moreau, PH Suet, R. Voituriez, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 198101 (2005)
3. O Benichou, C. Loverdo, M. Moreau, R. Voituriez, Phys. Rev. E 74, 020102 (2006)
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