Current in a three-dimensional periodic tube with unbiased forces

Abstract

Transport of a Brownian particle moving along the axis of a three-dimensional asymmetric periodic tube is investigated in the presence of asymmetric unbiased forces. The reduction of the coordinates may involve not only the appearance of entropic barrier but also the effective diffusion coefficient. It is found that in the presence of entropic barrier, the asymmetry of the tube shape and the asymmetry of the unbiased forces are the two ways of inducing a net current. The current is a peaked function of temperature which indicates that the thermal noise may facilitate the transport even in the presence of entropic barrier. There exists an optimized radius at the bottleneck at which the current takes its maximum value. Competition between the two opposite driving factors may induce current reversal.

7 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Entropic transport: Kinetics, scaling and control mechanisms
• Efficiency optimization in a correlation ratchet with asymmetric unbiased fluctuations
• Current Reversals in a inhomogeneous system with asymmetric unbiased fluctuations

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Artificial Brownian motors: Controlling transport on the nanoscale
• Biased diffusion in confined media: Test of the Fick-Jacobs approximation and validity criteria
• Entropic particle transport in periodic channels
• Thermal noise can facilitate energy transformation in the presence of entropic barriers
• Facilitated movement of inertial Brownian motors driven by a load under an asymmetric potential