Active Matter at high density: velocity distribution and kinetic temperature

TL;DR

This paper investigates the velocity distribution and kinetic temperature of dense active matter in solid and hexatic phases, revealing a transition in velocity distribution shape and providing an analytical expression for kinetic temperature.

Contribution

It offers new analytical predictions for velocity distribution shapes and derives an exact formula for kinetic temperature in dense active particle systems.

Findings

Velocity distribution transitions from Mexican-hat-like to Gaussian-like.

Derived an exact analytical expression for kinetic temperature.

Validated predictions through numerical and theoretical analysis.

Abstract

We consider the solid or hexatic non-equilibrium phases of an interacting two-dimensional system of Active Brownian Particles at high density and investigate numerically and theoretically the properties of the velocity distribution function and the associated kinetic temperature. We obtain approximate analytical predictions for the shape of the velocity distribution and find a transition from a Mexican-hat-like to a Gaussian-like distribution as the persistence time of the active force changes from the small to the large persistence regime. Through a detailed numerical and theoretical analysis of the single-particle velocity variance, we report an exact analytical expression for the kinetic temperature of dense spherical self-propelled particles that holds also in the non-equilibrium regimes with large persistence times and discuss its range of validity.