Eur. Phys. J. B (2012) 85: 1
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2011-20818-1

Regular Article

Collective transport of coupled particles

¹ Institute for Physics, Humboldt University at Berlin, Newtonstr. 15, 12489 Berlin, Germany
² Department of Mathematics, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, PO1 3HF, UK

^a e-mail: hennigd@physik.hu-berlin.de

Received: 6 October 2011
Received in final form: 27 October 2011
Published online: 6 January 2012

Abstract

We consider the dynamics for a system consisting of three coupled, driven and damped particles evolving in a symmetric and spatially-periodic potential landscape. The three coupled particles, known as a trimer, form a one-dimensional chain. Our main focus is concentrated on running solutions for this system. In particular, we explore the nature of these solutions. Therefore, proofs are derived showing that for the three coupled particles in a running state 1) each particle travels the same distance in a single period and, 2) there is only one possible transport scenario – namely when the particles travel in rod-like motion. It is also shown that in such a state, the particles, evolving on a periodic attractor, no longer exchange energy with one another. Thus in a running state the three-particle system, evolving in general in a high-dimensional phase space, effectively reduces to a single-particle system and motion takes place on a lower dimensional attractor, viz. a limit cycle. Furthermore analysis is carried out exploring how the frequency of the driving affects coherent particle transport. Numerical evidence demonstrates that there is a small window of frequencies for which (low-dimensional) limit cycles exist allowing for directed particle transport to occur.