Global density equations for a population of actively switching particles

Abstract

There are many processes in cell biology that can be modelled in terms of an actively switching particle. The continuous degrees of freedom evolve according to a hybrid stochastic differential equation (hSDE) whose drift term depends on a discrete internal or environmental state that switches according to a continuous time Markov chain. In this paper we derive global density equations for a population of non-interacting actively switching particles, either independently switching or subject to a common randomly switching environment. In the case of a random environment, we show that the global particle density evolves according to a hybrid stochastic partial differential equation (hSPDE). Averaging with respect to the Gaussian noise processes yields a hybrid partial differential equation (hPDE) for the one-particle density. We use the corresponding functional Chapman-Kolmogorov equation to derive moment equations for the one-particle density and show how a randomly switching environment induces statistical correlations. We also discuss the effects of particle interactions, which generate moment closure problems at both the hSPDE and hPDE levels. The former can be handled by taking a mean field limit, but the resulting hPDE is now a nonlinear functional of the one-particle density. We then develop the analogous constructions for independently switching particles. We introduce a discrete set of global densities that are indexed by the single-particle internal states. We derive an SPDE for the densities by taking expectations with respect to the switching process, and then use a slow/fast analysis to reduce the SPDE to a scalar stochastic Fokker-Planck equation in the fast-switching limit. We end by deriving path integrals for the global densities in the absence of interactions and relate this to recent studies of Brownian gases and run-and-tumble particles.