Dynamics and escape of active particles in a harmonic trap

The dynamics of active particles are of interest at many levels and is the focus of theoretical and experimental research. There have been many attempts to describe the dynamics of particles affected by random active forces in terms of an effective temperature. This kind of description is tempting due to the similarities (or lack thereof) with systems in or near thermal equilibrium. However, the generality and validity of the effective temperature is not yet fully understood. I will present expressions derived for the effective temperature due to the potential and kinetic energies, their ability to predict escape times from a harmonic trap and alternative expressions where effective temperatures are a poor indicator of the escape time. I will also show some evidence for the validity of these effective temperatures for non-harmonic dynamics, as well as their limitations in describing different active force implementations.