The fractional Fokker-Planck equation for subdiffusion in time-dependent force fields is derived from the underlying continuous time random walk. Its limitations are discussed and it is then applied to the study of subdiffusion under the influence of a time-periodic rectangular force. As a main result, we show that such a force does not affect the universal scaling relation between the anomalous current and diffusion when applied to the biased dynamics: in the long time limit subdiffusion current and anomalous diffusion are immune to the driving. This is in sharp contrast with the unbiased case when the subdiffusion coefficient can be strongly enhanced, i.e. a zero-frequency response to a periodic driving is present.
It is pointed out that, for the fractional Fokker-Planck equation for subdiffusion proposed by Metzler, Barkai, and Klafter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82 (1999) 3563], there are four types of infinitely many exact solutions associated with the newly discovered exceptional orthogonal polynomials. They represent fractionally deformed versions of the Rayleigh process and the Jacobi process.
Inspired by one--dimensional light--particle systems, the dynamics of a non-Hamiltonian system with long--range forces is investigated. While the molecular dynamics does not reach an equilibrium state, it may be approximated in the thermodynamic limit by a Vlasov equation that does possess stable stationary solutions. This implies that on a macroscopic scale, the molecular dynamics evolves on a slow timescale that diverges with the system size. At the single-particle level, the evolution is driven by incoherent interaction between the particles, which may be effectively modeled by a noise, lea…
The phenomena of subdiffusion are widely observed in physical and biological systems. To investigate the effects of external potentials, say, harmonic potential, linear potential, and time dependent force, we study the subdiffusion described by subordinated Langevin equation with white Gaussian noise, or equivalently, by the single Langevin equation with compound noise. If the force acts on the subordinated process, it keeps working all the time; otherwise, the force just exerts an influence on the system at the moments of jump. Some common statistical quantities, such as, the ensemble and tim…
By collecting from literature data the experimental evidences of anomalous diffusion of passive tracers inside cytoplasm, and in particular of subdiffusion of mRNA molecules inside live E. coli cells, we get the probability density function of molecules' displacement and we derive the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation. Molecules' distribution emerges to be related to the Krätzel function and its Fokker-Planck equation be a fractional diffusion equation in the Erdélyi-Kober sense. The irreducibility of the derived Fokker-Planck equation to those of other literature models is also discussed.
Reaction-diffusion equations are one of the most common mathematical models in the natural sciences and are used to model systems that combine reactions with diffusive motion. However, rather than normal diffusion, anomalous subdiffusion is observed in many systems and is especially prevalent in cell biology. What are the reaction-subdiffusion equations describing a system that involves first-order reactions and subdiffusive motion? In this paper, we answer this question. We derive fractional reaction-subdiffusion equations describing an arbitrary number of molecular species which react at fir…
Deriving evolution equations accounting for both anomalous diffusion and reactions is notoriously difficult, even in the simplest cases. In contrast to normal diffusion, reaction kinetics cannot be incorporated into evolution equations modeling subdiffusion by merely adding reaction terms to the equations describing spatial movement. A series of previous works derived fractional reaction-diffusion equations for the spatiotemporal evolution of particles undergoing subdiffusion in one space dimension with linear reactions between a finite number of discrete states. In this paper, we first give a…
We introduce a single generative mechanism with which it is able to describe diverse non-stationary diffusions. A non-stationary Markovian replication process for steps is considered, for which we analytically derive time-evolution of the probability distribution of the walker's displacement and the generalized telegrapher equation with time-varying coefficients, and find that diffusivity can be determined by temporal changes of replication of a immediate step. By controlling the replications, we realize the diverse diffusions such as alternating diffusions, superdiffusions, subdiffusions, and…
The diffusion in the comb structures is a popular model of geometrically induced anomalous diffusion. In the present work we concentrate on the diffusion along the backbone in a system where sidebranches are planes, and the diffusion thereon is anomalous and described by continuous time random walks (CTRW). We show that the mean squared displacement (MSD) in the backbone of the comb behaves differently depending on whether the waiting time periods in the sidebranches are reset after the step in the backbone is done (a rejuvenating junction model), or not (a non-rejuvenating junction model). In…
Diffusion of tracer particles in the cytoplasm of mammalian cells is often anomalous with a marked heterogeneity even within individual particle trajectories. Despite considerable efforts, the mechanisms behind these observations have remained largely elusive. To tackle this problem, we performed extensive single-particle tracking experiments on quantum dots in the cytoplasm of living mammalian cells at varying conditions. Analyses of the trajectories reveal a strong, microtubule-dependent subdiffusion with antipersistent increments and a substantial heterogeneity. Furthermore, particles stoch…
