Active chiral particles under confinement: surface currents and bulk accumulation phenomena

Abstract

In this work, we study the stationary behavior of an assembly of independent chiral active particles under confinement by employing an extension of the active Ornstein–Uhlenbeck model. The chirality modeled by means of an effective torque term leads to a drastic reduction in the accumulation near the walls with respect to the case without handedness and to the appearance of currents parallel to the container walls accompanied by a large accumulation of particles in the inner region. In the case of two-dimensional chiral particles confined by harmonic walls, we determine the analytic form of the distribution of positions and velocities in two different situations: a rotationally invariant confining potential and an infinite channel with parabolic walls. Both these models display currents and chirality induced inner accumulation. These phenomena are further investigated by means of a more realistic description of a channel, where the wall and bulk regions are clearly separated. The corresponding current and density profiles are obtained by numerical simulations. At variance with the harmonic models, the third model shows a progressive emptying of the wall regions and the simultaneous enhancement of the bulk population. We explain such a phenomenon in terms of the combined effect of wall repulsive forces and chiral motion and provide a semiquantitative description of the current profile in terms of effective viscosity of the chiral gas.