• Accepted Paper

Active Brownian dynamics in channels: First-passage and spatiotemporal properties via Siegmund duality

Yanis Baouche, Mathis Guéneau, and Christina Kurzthaler

Phys. Rev. Lett. - Accepted 24 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/g83n-r4hs

Abstract

Accumulation at boundaries represents a widely observed phenomenon in active systems with implications for microbial ecology and engineering applications. To rationalize the underlying physics, we study the first-passage properties and spatial distributions of an active Brownian particle (ABP) in a channel. Leveraging Siegmund duality, we establish a direct mapping between the propagators of ABPs with absorbing and hard-wall boundary conditions, yielding analytical results in both problems. We analyze the system across low and high activity regimes – quantifying persistent motion relative to diffusion – and show that active motion, together with a favorable initial orientation, typically lowers the mean first-passage time relative to passive diffusion. Notably, the full time-dependent propagator between hard walls approaches a wall-accumulated stationary state, given by the derivative of the splitting probability as a consequence of Siegmund duality.

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