Eur. Phys. J. B 62, 179-208 (2008)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2008-00142-9

Nonlinear mean field Fokker-Planck equations. Application to the chemotaxis of biological populations

Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Université Paul Sabatier, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse, France

Corresponding author: ^a chavanis@irsamc.ups-tlse.fr

Received: 12 September 2007
Revised: 25 February 2008
Published online: 11 April 2008

Abstract

We study a general class of nonlinear mean field Fokker-Planck equations in relation with an effective generalized thermodynamical (E.G.T.) formalism. We show that these equations describe several physical systems such as: chemotaxis of bacterial populations, Bose-Einstein condensation in the canonical ensemble, porous media, generalized Cahn-Hilliard equations, Kuramoto model, BMF model, Burgers equation, Smoluchowski-Poisson system for self-gravitating Brownian particles, Debye-Hückel theory of electrolytes, two-dimensional turbulence... In particular, we show that nonlinear mean field Fokker-Planck equations can provide generalized Keller-Segel models for the chemotaxis of biological populations. As an example, we introduce a new model of chemotaxis incorporating both effects of anomalous diffusion and exclusion principle (volume filling). Therefore, the notion of generalized thermodynamics can have applications for concrete physical systems. We also consider nonlinear mean field Fokker-Planck equations in phase space and show the passage from the generalized Kramers equation to the generalized Smoluchowski equation in a strong friction limit. Our formalism is simple and illustrated by several explicit examples corresponding to Boltzmann, Tsallis, Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein entropies among others.