Active Brownian Motion in Two Dimensions

Urna Basu, Satya N. Majumdar, Alberto Rosso, Gregory Schehr

Published 2018-04-24Version 1

We study the dynamics of a single active Brownian particle (ABP) in a two-dimensional harmonic trap. The active particle has an intrinsic time scale $D_R^{-1}$ set by the rotational diffusion with diffusion constant $D_R$. The harmonic trap also induces a relaxational time-scale $\mu^{-1}$. We show that the competition between these two time scales leads to a nontrivial time evolution for the ABP. At short times a strongly anisotropic motion emerges leading to anomalous persistence/first-passage properties. At long-times, the stationary position distribution in the trap exhibits two different behaviours: a Gaussian peak at the origin in the strongly passive limit ($D_R \to \infty$) and a delocalised ring away from the origin in the opposite strongly active limit ($D_R \to 0$). The predicted stationary behaviours in these limits are in agreement with recent experimental observations.