Microscopic derivation of the hydrodynamics of active-Brownian-particle suspensions

TL;DR

This paper derives hydrodynamic equations for active particle suspensions from microscopic Langevin dynamics, clarifying conditions for self-propulsion to be incorporated into fluid stress and defining local pressure.

Contribution

It provides a systematic derivation of active fluid hydrodynamics from microscopic models using multiple-time-scale analysis.

Findings

Hydrodynamic equations derived from microscopic active particle dynamics.

Conditions identified for self-propulsion to be included in fluid stress.

Systematic definition of local pressure in active fluids.

Abstract

We derive the hydrodynamic equations of motion for a fluid of active particles described by under- damped Langevin equations that reduce to the Active-Brownian-Particle model, in the overdamped limit. The contraction into the hydrodynamic description is performed by locally averaging the par- ticle dynamics with the non-equilibrium many-particle probability density, whose formal expression is found in the physically relevant limit of high-friction through a multiple-time-scale analysis. This approach permits to identify the conditions under which self-propulsion can be subsumed into the fluid stress tensor and thus to define systematically and unambiguously the local pressure of the active fluid.