Critical coupling thresholds for tilted Kuramoto-Vicsek models with a confining potential

Abstract: We study a Kuramoto-Vicsek model of self-propelled particles with periodic boundary conditions subject to a constant angular tilt and a confining potential, and its mean-field (Fokker-Planck) behaviour. In the absence of confinement, the uniform density is stationary and we compute the critical coupling for four normalisation variants of the interaction kernel, showing that the leading instability is always spatially homogeneous. When the confining field is present, the uniform state is no longer stationary. We construct the new steady state perturbatively and apply eigenvalue perturbation theory to derive an explicit formula for the critical coupling as a function of the field strength. The threshold increases quadratically with confinement strength, and the tilt enters through the steady-state correction despite having no effect on the threshold in the absence of confinement. We verify the prediction numerically and derive self-consistency equations for stationary states with general multichromatic potentials.