On the existence of Ulrich vector bundles on some irregular surfaces

We establish the existence of rank two Ulrich vector bundles on surfaces that are either of maximal Albanese dimension or with irregularity 1, under many embeddings. In particular we get the first known examples of Ulrich vector bundles on irregular surfaces of general type. Another consequence is that every surface such that either $q \le 1$ or $q \ge 2$ and its minimal model has rank one, carries a simple rank two Ulrich vector bundle.