Based on the nonequilibrium Green's function technique, a unified theory is developed that covers quantum transport and quantum diffusion in bulk semiconductors on the same footing. This approach, which is applicable to transport via extended and localized states, extends previous semi-phenomenological studies and puts them on a firm microscopic basis. The approach is sufficiently general and applies not only to well-studied quantum transport problems, but also to models, in which the Hamiltonian does not commute with the dipole operator. It is shown that, even for the unified treatment of quantum transport and quantum diffusion in homogeneous systems, all quasi-momenta of the carrier distribution function are present and fulfill their specific function. Particular emphasis is put on the double-time nature of quantum kinetics. To demonstrate the existence of robust macroscopic transport effects that have a true double-time character, a phononless steady-state current is identified that appears only beyond the generalized Kadanoff-Baym ansatz.
We compute the effective diffusion coefficient of a Brownian particle in a piece-wise linear periodic potential and subject of spatially inhomogeneous temperature, otherwise known as the B{ü}ttiker-Landauer motor. We obtain analytical expressions for the current and diffusion coefficients and compare with numerical results.
We study the noise induced transport of an overdamped Brownian particle in frictional ratchet systems in the presence of external Gaussian white noise fluctuations. The analytical expressions for current and diffusion coefficient are derived and the reliability or coherence of transport are discussed by means of their ratio. We show that frictional ratchets exhibit larger coherence as compared to the flashing and rocking ratchets.
We computationally study the effects of binding kinetics to the channel wall, leading to transient immobility, on the diffusive transport of particles within narrow channels, that exhibit single-file diffusion (SFD). We find that slow binding kinetics leads to an anomalously slow diffusive transport. Remarkably, the scaled diffusivity $\hat{D}$ characterizing transport exhibits scaling collapse with respect to the occupation fraction $p$ of sites along the channel. We present a simple "cage-physics" picture that captures the characteristic occupation fraction $p_{scale}$ and the asymptotic $1/…
Hydrodynamic memory force or Basset force is known since the 19th-century. Its influence on Brownian motion remains, however, mostly unexplored. Here, we investigate its role in nonlinear transport and diffusion within a paradigmatic model of tilted washboard potential. In this model, a giant enhancement of driven diffusion over its potential-free limit presents a well-established paradoxical phenomenon. In the overdamped limit, it occurs at a critical tilt of vanishing potential barriers. However, for weak damping, it takes place surprisingly at another critical tilt, where the potential barr…
Transport of point-size Brownian particles under the influence of a constant and uniform force field through a three-dimensional channel with smoothly varying periodic cross-section is investigated. Here, we employ an asymptotic analysis in the ratio between the difference of the widest and the most narrow constriction divided through the period length of the channel geometry. We demonstrate that the leading order term is equivalent to the Fick-Jacobs approximation. By use of the higher order corrections to the probability density we derive an expression for the spatially dependent diffusion c…
Various model problems of ``transport-limited dissolution'' in two dimensions are analyzed using time-dependent conformal maps. For diffusion-limited dissolution (reverse Laplacian growth), several exact solutions are discussed for the smoothing of corrugated surfaces, including the continuous analogs of ``internal diffusion-limited aggregation'' and ``diffusion-limited erosion''. A class of non-Laplacian, transport-limited dissolution processes are also considered, which raise the general question of when and where a finite solid will disappear. In a case of dissolution by advection-diffusion…
Consider a network embedded in the 2D plane, where a particle diffuses along the edges of the network. It is clear that over short length scales a particle moves along a single edge and thus undergoes one-dimensional diffusion. However, on larger length scales it is no longer immediately clear how the transport will behave. One could intuit that as the network is embedded in two dimensions for "large enough" length scales the transport will also appear two-dimensional. Is this true for all networks? Can we quantify the length scales upon which this transition occurs? What is the transport beha…
We study nano-pattern formation in a stochastic model for adsorption-desorption processes with interacting adsorbate and hyperbolic transport caused by memory effects. It is shown that at early stages the system manifests pattern selection processes. Stationary stable patterns of nano-size are analyzed. It was found that multiplicative noise satisfying fluctuation-dissipation relation can induce re-entrant pattern formation related to non-equilibrium transitions. According to obtained Fokker-Planck equation kinetics of island sizes in a quasi-stationary limit is discussed. Analytical results a…
A grid comb model is a generalization of the well known comb model, and it consists of $N$ backbones. For $N=1$ the system reduces to the comb model where subdiffusion takes place with the transport exponent $1/2$. We present an exact analytical evaluation of the transport exponent of anomalous diffusion for finite and infinite number of backbones. We show that for an arbitrarily large but finite number of backbones the transport exponent does not change. Contrary to that, for an infinite number of backbones, the transport exponent depends on the fractal dimension of the backbone structure.
We study transport in topologically disordered networks that are subjected to an environment that induces classical diffusion. The dynamics is phenomenologically described within the framework of the recently introduced quantum stochastic walk, allowing to study the crossover between coherent transport and purely classical diffusion. We find that the coupling to the environment removes all effects of localization and quickly leads to classical transport. Furthermore, we find that on the level of the transport efficiency, the system can be well described by reducing it to a two-node network (a …
We investigate the dynamics of an overdamped Brownian particle moving in a washboard potential with space dependent friction coefficient. Analytical expressions have been obtained for current and diffusion coefficient. We show that the effective diffusion coefficient can be enhanced or suppressed compared to that of the uniform friction case. The diffusion coefficient is maximum near the critical threshold ($F_{c}$), which is sensitive to temperature and the frictional profile. In some parameter regime we observe that increase in noise (temperature) decreases the diffusion, which is counter-in…
Diffusion of transported particles in the intracellular medium is described by means of a generalized diffusion equation containing forces due to the cytoskeleton network and to the protein motors. We find that the enhanced diffusion observed in experiments depends on the nature of the force exerted by the protein motors and on parameters characterizing the intracellular medium which is described in terms of a generalized Debye spectrum for the noise density of states.
We show that the Turing patterns in reaction systems with subdiffusion can be replicated in an effective system with Markovian cross-diffusion. The effective system has the same Turing instability as the original system, and the same patterns. If particles are short-lived, the transient dynamics are captured as well. We use the cross-diffusive system to define effective diffusion coefficients for the system with anomalous transport, and we show how they can be used to efficiently describe the Turing instability. We also demonstrate that the mean squared displacement of a suitably defined ensem…
We construct both normal and anomalous deterministic biased diffusions to obtain the Einstein relation for their time-averaged transport coefficients. We find that the difference of the generalized Lyapunov exponent between biased and unbiased deterministic diffusions is related to the normalized velocity based on the ensemble average. By Hopf's ergodic theorem, the ratios between the time-averaged velocity and the Lyapunov exponent for single trajectories converge to a universal constant, which is proportional to the strength of the bias. We confirm this theory using numerical simulations.
Diffusion and rectification of Brownian particles powered by a rotating wheel are numerically investigated in a two-dimensional channel. The nonequilibrium driving comes from the rotating wheel, which can break thermodynamical equilibrium and induce the directed transport in an asymmetric potential. It is found that the direction of the transport along the potential is determined by the asymmetry of the potential and the position of the wheel. The average velocity is a peaked function of the angular speed (or the diffusion coefficient) and the position of the peak shifts to large angular speed…
Colloids coupled to a bath of swimming cells generically display enhanced diffusion. This transport dynamics stems from a subtle interplay between the active and passive particles that still resists our understanding despite decades of intense research. Here, we tackle the root of the problem by providing a quantitative characterisation of the single scattering events between a colloid and a bacterium. Based on our experiments, we build a minimal model that quantitatively predicts the geometry of the scattering trajectories, and enhanced colloidal diffusion at long times. This quantitative con…
Transport and diffusion of paramagnetic ellipsoidal particles under the action of a rotating magnetic field are numerically investigated in a two-dimensional channel. It is found that paramagnetic ellipsoidal particles in a rotating magnetic field can be rectified in the upper-lower asymmetric channel. The transport and the effective diffusion coefficient are much more different and complicated for active particles, while they have similar behaviors and change a little when applying rotating magnetic fields of different frequencies for passive particles. For active particles, the back-and-fort…
Many approaches to modelling reaction-diffusion systems with anomalous transport rely on deterministic equations and ignore fluctuations arising due to finite particle numbers. Starting from an individual-based model we use a generating-functional approach to derive a Gaussian approximation for this intrinsic noise in subdiffusive systems. This results in corrections to the deterministic fractional reaction-diffusion equations. Using this analytical approach, we study the onset of noise-driven quasi-patterns in reaction-subdiffusion systems. We find that subdiffusion can be conducive to the fo…
Living cells are known to generate non-Gaussian active fluctuations significantly larger than thermal fluctuations owing to various active processes. Understanding the effect of these active fluctuations on various physicochemical processes, such as the transport of molecular motors, is a fundamental problem in nonequilibrium physics. Therefore, we experimentally and numerically study an active Brownian ratchet comprising a colloidal particle in an optically generated asymmetric periodic potential driven by non-Gaussian noise having finite-amplitude active bursts, each arriving at random and d…
Anomalous (or non-Fickian) diffusion has been widely found in fluid reactive transport and the traditional advection diffusion reaction equation based on Fickian diffusion is proved to be inadequate to predict this anomalous transport of the reactive particle in flows. To capture the complex couple effect among advection, diffusion and reaction, and the energy-dependent characteristics of fluid reactive anomalous transport, in the present paper we analyze $A\rightarrow B$ reaction under anomalous diffusion with waiting time depending on the preceding jump length in linear flows, and derive the…
It has been observed in many numerical simulations, experiments and from various theoretical treatments that heat transport in one-dimensional systems of interacting particles cannot be described by the phenomenological Fourier's law. The picture that has emerged from studies over the last few years is that Fourier's law gets replaced by a spatially non-local linear equation wherein the current at a point gets contributions from the temperature gradients in other parts of the system. Correspondingly the usual heat diffusion equation gets replaced by a non-local fractional-type diffusion equati…
By using the generalized Boltzmann equation of transport in nonextensive statistics, we study transport properties of the diffusion flux and the heat flux of charged particles in the weakly ionized plasma with the power-law q-distributions under the magnetic field. We derive the tensor expressions of diffusion coefficient, thermal diffusion coefficient, mobility and thermal conductivity of electrons and ions in the q-distributed plasma under magnetic field. We show that the tensors of the diffusion coefficient, the thermal diffusion coefficient and the thermal conductivity are strongly depend …
In this paper we exactly solve the diffusion-advection equation for cosmic-ray transport. With this purpose we use the Theory of Ultradistributions of J. Sebastiao e Silva, to give a general solution for this equation. From this solution, we obtain several approximations as limiting cases of various situations of physical and astrophysical interest. One of them involves Solar cosmic-rays' diffusion.
A variation principle for mass transport in solids is derived that recasts transport coefficients as minima of local thermodynamic average quantities. The result is independent of diffusion mechanism, and applies to amorphous and crystalline systems. This unifies different computational approaches for diffusion, and provides a framework for the creation of new approximation methods with error estimation. It gives a different physical interpretation of the Green function. Finally, the variational principle quantifies the accuracy of competing approaches for a nontrivial diffusion problem.
In this effort we exactly solve the fractional diffusion-advection equation for solar cosmic-ray transport proposed in \cite{LE2014} and give its {\it general solution} in terms of hypergeometric distributions. Also, we regain all the results and approximations given in \cite{LE2014} as {\it particular cases} of our general solution.
Particles driven through a periodic potential by an external constant force are known to exhibit a pronounced peak of the diffusion around a critical force that defines the transition between locked and running states. It has recently been shown both experimentally and numerically that this peak is greatly enhanced if some amount of spatial disorder is superimposed on the periodic potential. Here we show that beyond a simple enhancement lies a much more interesting phenomenology. For some parameter regimes the system exhibits a rich variety of behaviors from normal diffusion to superdiffusion,…
We present a theoretical and experimental study of light transport in disordered media with strongly heterogeneous distribution of scatterers formed via non-scattering regions. Step correlations induced by quenched disorder are found to prevent diffusivity from diverging with increasing heterogeneity scale, contrary to expectations from annealed models. Spectral diffusivity is measured for a porous ceramic where nanopores act as scatterers and macropores render their distribution heterogeneous. Results agree well with Monte Carlo simulations and a proposed analytical model.
