Eur. Phys. J. E (2017) 40: 61
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2017-11551-3

Regular Article

Equilibrium mappings in polar-isotropic confined active particles

Martin Fisher School of Physics, Brandeis University, 02453, Waltham, MA, USA

^* e-mail: yffily@gmail.com

Received: 9 February 2017
Accepted: 29 May 2017
Published online: 13 June 2017

Abstract

Despite their fundamentally nonequilibrium nature, the individual and collective behavior of active systems with polar propulsion and isotropic interactions (polar-isotropic active systems) are remarkably well captured by equilibrium mapping techniques. Here we examine two signatures of equilibrium systems --the existence of a local free energy function and the independence of the coarse-grained behavior on the details of the microscopic dynamics-- in polar-isotropic active particles confined by hard walls of arbitrary geometry at the one-particle level. We find that boundaries that possess concave regions make the density profile strongly dynamics-dependent and give it a nonlocal dependence on the geometry of the confining box. This in turn constrains the scope of equilibrium mapping techniques in polar-isotropic active systems.