Thermostatistics of overdamped motion with anisotropic drag forces

Abstract

We investigate the consequences of anisotropic drag forces for the thermostatistics of systems of interacting particles in the overdamped motion regime. Systems of confined particles interacting via short-range forces and performing overdamped motion exhibit interesting thermodynamic features, and constitute useful models for various problems in physics and other areas. In particular, they proved useful for the study of interacting vortices in type-II superconductors. The dynamics of the above mentioned many-particle systems admits an effective description based on nonlinear Fokker-Planck equations with power-law diffusion terms. Most works studying this kind of systems, and their relationship with nonlinear Fokker-Planck equations, assume isotropic drag forces. In the present work we consider the effects of anisotropic drag forces on this kind of systems. We derive the corresponding nonlinear Fokker-Planck equations and investigate some of their main properties.