We study non-equilibrium analogues of surface phase transitions in a minimal model of active particles in contact with a purely repulsive potential barrier that mimics a thin porous membrane. Under conditions of bulk motility-induced phase separation, the interaction strength $\varepsilon_w$ of the barrier controls the affinity of the dense phase for the barrier region. We uncover clear signatures of a wetting phase transition as $\varepsilon_w$ is varied. In common with its equilibrium counterpart, the character of this transition depends on the system dimensionality: a continuous transition with large density fluctuations and gas bubbles is uncovered in 2d while 3d systems exhibit a sharp transition absent of large correlations.
The dynamics of a tracer molecule near a fluid membrane is investigated, with particular emphasis given to the interplay between the instantaneous position of the particle and membrane fluctuations. It is found that hydrodynamic interactions creates memory effects in the diffusion process. The random motion of the particle is then shown to cross over from a ``bulk'' to a ``surface'' diffusive mode, in a way that crucially depends on the elastic properties of the interface.
Motivated by the observations of intracellular phase separations and the wetting of cell membranes by protein droplets, we study the nonequilibrium surface wetting by Monte Carlo simulations of a lattice gas model involving particle creation. We find that, even when complete wetting should occur in equilibrium, the fast creation of particles can hinder the surface wetting for a long time due to the bulk droplet formation. Performing molecular dynamics simulations, we show that this situation also holds in colloidal particle systems when the disorder density is sufficiently high. The results su…
We construct and exactly solve a model of an extended Brownian ratchet. The model comprises an arbitrary number of heterogeneous, growing and shrinking filaments which together move a rigid membrane by a ratchet mechanism. The model draws parallels with the dynamics of actin filament networks at the leading edge of the cell. In the model, the filaments grow and contract stochastically. The model also includes forces which derive from a potential dependent on the separation between the filaments and the membrane. These forces serve to attract the filaments to the membrane or generate a surface …
Diffusion processes in biological membranes are of interest to understand the macromolecular organisation and function of several molecules. Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching (FRAP) has been widely used as a method to analyse this processes using classical Brownian diffusion model. In the first part of this work, the analytical expression of the fluorescence recovery as a function of time has been established for anomalous diffusion due to long waiting times. Then, experimental fluorescence recoveries recorded in living cells on a membrane-bound protein have been analysed using three …
We present a position Langevin equation for overdamped particle motion on rough two-dimensional surfaces. A Brownian Dynamics algorithm is suggested to evolve this equation numerically, allowing for the prediction of effective (projected) diffusion coefficients over corrugated surfaces. In the case of static surface roughness, we find that a simple area-scaling prediction for the projected diffusion coefficient leads to seemingly quantitative agreement with numerical results. To study the effect of dynamic surface evolution on the diffusive process, we consider particle diffusion over a therma…
We study the occupation fluctuations of drifted Brownian motion in a closed interval, and show that they undergo a dynamical phase transition in the long-time limit without an additional low-noise limit. This phase transition is similar to wetting and depinning transitions, and arises here as a switching between paths of the random motion leading to different occupations. For low occupations, the motion essentially stays in the interval for some fraction of time before escaping, while for high occupations the motion is confined in an ergodic way in the interval. This is confirmed by studying a…
Recent in vitro experiments with FtsZ polymers show self-organization into different dynamic patterns, including structures reminiscent of the bacterial Z-ring. We model FtsZ polymers as active particles moving along chiral, circular paths by Brownian dynamics simulations and a Boltzmann approach. Our two conceptually different methods point to a generic phase behavior. At intermediate particle densities, we find self-organization into vortex structures including closed rings. Moreover, we show that the dynamics at the onset of pattern formation is described by a generalized complex Ginzburg-L…
Water molecules play an important role in providing unique environments for biological reactions on cell membranes. It is widely believed that water molecules form bridges that connect lipid molecules and stabilize cell membranes. Using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, we show that translational and rotational diffusion of water molecules on lipid membrane surfaces exhibit subdiffusion. Moreover, we provide evidence that both divergent mean trapping time (continuous-time random walk) and long-correlated noise (fractional Brownian motion) contribute to this subdiffusion. These results s…
Wetting phenomena, molecular protrusions of lipid bilayers and membrane stacks under lateral tension provide physical examples for interacting surfaces with tension. Such surfaces are studied theoretically using functional renormalization and Monte Carlo simulations. The critical behavior arising from thermally-excited shape fluctuations is determined both for global quantities such as the mean separation of these surfaces and for local quantities such as the probabilities for local contacts.
We present a study on the dynamics of a system consisting of a pair of hardcore particles diffusing with different rates. We solved the drift-diffusion equation for this model in the case when one particle, labeled F, drifts and diffuses slowly towards the second particle, labeled M. The displacements of particle M exhibits a crossover from diffusion to drift at a characteristic time which depends on the rate constants. We show that the positional fluctuation of M exhibits an intermediate crossover regime of subdiffusion separating initial and asymptotic diffusive behavior; this is in agreemen…
Diffusion rates through a membrane can be asymmetric, if the diffusing particles are spatially extended and the pores in the membrane have asymmetric structure. This phenomenon is demonstrated here via a deterministic simulation of a two-species hard-disk gas, and via simulations of two species in Brownian motion, diffusing through a membrane that is permeable to one species but not the other. In its extreme form, this effect will rapidly seal off flow in one direction through a membrane, while allowing free flow in the other direction. The system thus relaxes to disequilibrium, with very diff…
A Brownian particle moving across a porous membrane subject to an oscillating force exhibits stochastic resonance with properties which strongly depend on the geometry of the confining cavities on the two sides of the membrane. Such a manifestation of stochastic resonance requires neither energetic nor entropic barriers, and can thus be regarded as a purely geometric effect. The magnitude of this effect is sensitive to the geometry of both the cavities and the pores, thus leading to distinctive optimal synchronization conditions.
Restrictions to molecular motion by barriers (membranes) are ubiquitous in biological tissues, porous media and composite materials. A major challenge is to characterize the microstructure of a material or an organism nondestructively using a bulk transport measurement. Here we demonstrate how the long-range structural correlations introduced by permeable membranes give rise to distinct features of transport. We consider Brownian motion restricted by randomly placed and oriented permeable membranes and focus on the disorder-averaged diffusion propagator using a scattering approach. The renorma…
We study the diffusion of a Brownian particle quadratically coupled to a thermally fluctuating field. In the weak coupling limit, a path-integral formulation allows to compute the effective diffusion coefficient in the cases of an active particle, that tends to suppress the field fluctuations, and of a passive particle, that only undergoes the field fluctuations. We show that the behavior is similar to what was previously found for a linear coupling: an active particle is always slowed down, whereas a passive particle is slowed down in a slow field and accelerated in a fast field. Numerical si…
Based upon the Smoluchowski equation on curved manifolds three physical observables are considered for the Brownian displacement, namely, geodesic displacement, $s$, Euclidean displacement, $δ{\bf R}$, and projected displacement $δ{\bf R}_{\perp}$. The Weingarten-Gauss equations are used to calculate the mean-square Euclidean displacements in the short-time regime. Our findings show that from an extrinsic point of view the geometry of the space affects the Brownian motion in such a way that the particle's diffusion is decelerated, contrasting with the intrinsic point of view where dynamics is …
How long does a diffusing molecule spend in a close vicinity of a confining boundary or a catalytic surface? This quantity is determined by the boundary local time, which plays thus a crucial role in the description of various surface-mediated phenomena such as heterogeneous catalysis, permeation through semi-permeable membranes, or surface relaxation in nuclear magnetic resonance. In this paper, we obtain the probability distribution of the boundary local time in terms of the spectral properties of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator. We investigate the short-time and long-time asymptotic behav…
Many cell membrane proteins that bind to actin form dynamic clusters driven by contractile flows generated by the actomyosin machinery at the cell cortex. Recent evidence suggests that a necessary condition for the generation of these protein clusters on the membrane is the stratified organization of the active agents -formin-nucleated actin, myosin-II minifilaments, and ARP2/3-nucleated actin mesh -within the cortex. Further, the observation that these clusters dynamically remodel, requires that the components of this active machinery undergo turnover. Here we develop a coarse-grained agent-b…
Diffusion through semipermeable structures arises in a wide range of processes in the physical and life sciences. Examples at the microscopic level range from artificial membranes for reverse osmosis to lipid bilayers regulating molecular transport in biological cells to chemical and electrical gap junctions. There are also macroscopic analogs such as animal migration in heterogeneous landscapes. It has recently been shown that one-dimensional diffusion through a barrier with constant permeability $κ_0$ is equivalent to snapping out Brownian motion (BM). The latter sews together successive rou…
Diffusion through semipermeable interfaces has a wide range of applications, ranging from molecular transport through biological membranes to reverse osmosis for water purification using artificial membranes. At the single-particle level, one-dimensional diffusion through a barrier with constant permeability $κ_0$ can be modeled in terms of so-called snapping out Brownian motion (BM). The latter sews together successive rounds of partially reflecting BMs that are restricted to either the left or right of the barrier. Each round is killed (absorbed) at the barrier when its Brownian local time e…
The system of one-dimensional symmetric simple random walks, in which none of walkers have met others in a given time period, is called the vicious walker model. It was introduced by Michael Fisher and applications of the model to various wetting and melting phenomena were described in his Boltzmann medal lecture. In the present report, we explain interesting connections among representation theory, probability theory, and random matrix theory using this simple diffusion particle system. Each vicious walk of $N$ walkers is represented by an $N$-tuple of nonintersecting lattice paths on the spa…
An overview of the author's papers on the new approach to the Brownian coagulation theory and its generalization to the diffusion-limited reaction rate theory is presented. The traditional diffusion approach of the Smoluchowski theory for coagulation of colloids is critically analyzed and shown to be valid only in the particular case of coalescence of small particles with large ones. It is shown that, owing to rapid diffusion mixing, coalescence of comparable size particles occurs in the kinetic regime, realized under condition of homogeneous spatial distribution of particles, in the two modes…
