Emergent Gauge Symmetry in Active Brownian Matter

We investigate a two-dimensional system of interacting Active Brownian Particles. Using the Martin-Siggia-Rose-Janssen-de Dominicis formalism, we built up the generating functional for correlation functions. We study in detail the hydrodynamic regime with a constant density stationary state. Our findings reveal that, within a small density fluctuations regime, an emergent $U(1)$ gauge symmetry arises, originated from the conservation of fluid vorticity. Consequently, the interaction between the orientational order parameter and density fluctuations can be cast into a gauge theory, where the concept of ``electric charge density" aligns with the local vorticity of the original fluid. We study in detail the case of a microscopic local two-body interaction. We show that, upon integrating out the gauge fields, the stationary states of the rotational degrees of freedom satisfy a non-local Frank free energy for a nematic fluid. We give explicit expressions for the splay and bend elastic constants as a function of the P\'eclet number (${\rm Pe}$) and the diffusion interaction constant ($k_d$).
Comment: 15 pages, final version accepted to publish in Phys. Rev. E