Zoom link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/91439466230?pwd=S3FSUW5FcEMvT0puaXhSekRIK2R4QT09

Active particles consume fuel to propel around and interact with their environments. This behavior gives rise to a myriad of fascinating out-of-equilibrium phenomena such as phase separation in the absence of attractive interactions and directional transport through funnel-shaped obstacles or around gear-like objects. I will start by giving a brief overview of my research studying how the physics of passive/equilibrium systems changes as one gradually increases the level of activity. I will then focus on how weakly active particles behave near different types or shapes of boundaries in various geometries. A weakly active particle is one where regular diffusion cannot be neglected and activity can be treated perturbatively. This limit of weak activity allows us to develop a relatively simple method for analytically calculating properties such as the density, orientations, and flows of these particles near boundaries. I will show that this method is quite versatile by applying it to weakly active particles in several geometries: (1) confinement in 1D, (2) confinement in a wedge-shaped region, (3) absorption around a sphere, and finally (4) flows near a rough boundary. These results in the limit of weak activity provides some insight into how active particles behave near boundaries.