https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2016-60963-3
Regular Article
Brownian motion on random dynamical landscapes
1 Departament d’Estructura i
Constituents de la MatèriaFacultat de Física, Universitat de
Barcelona, Diagonal
647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
2 Department of Chemistry and
Biochemistry and BioCircuits Institute, University of California San Diego,
9500 Gilman Drive,
La Jolla, California
92093-0340,
USA
a e-mail: sune@ecm.ub.edu
Received:
15
December
2015
Received in final form:
4
February
2016
Published online:
23
March
2016
We present a study of overdamped Brownian particles moving on a random landscape of dynamic and deformable obstacles (spatio-temporal disorder). The obstacles move randomly, assemble, and dissociate following their own dynamics. This landscape may account for a soft matter or liquid environment in which large obstacles, such as macromolecules and organelles in the cytoplasm of a living cell, or colloids or polymers in a liquid, move slowly leading to crowding effects. This representation also constitutes a novel approach to the macroscopic dynamics exhibited by active matter media. We present numerical results on the transport and diffusion properties of Brownian particles under this disorder biased by a constant external force. The landscape dynamics are characterized by a Gaussian spatio-temporal correlation, with fixed time and spatial scales, and controlled obstacle concentrations.
Key words: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2016