Single active particle engine utilizing a nonreciprocal coupling between particle position and self-propulsion

A self-propelled particle is formally equivalent to a system consisting of two sub-systems interacting with their own heat reservoirs and coupled by a nonreciprocal (violating Newton's third law) interaction. We previously showed that this approach allows us to generalize stochastic thermodynamics to systems of active particles. Here we argue that the nonreciprocal coupling can be used to extract useful work from a single self-propelled particle maintained at constant temperature. We demonstrate one way to achieve this extraction, through manipulating correlations between the particle's position and self-propulsion using an externally controlled aligning interaction. We analyze quantitatively the work extracted and the power, and the efficiency of the resulting single active particle engine.