Statistical mechanics of passive Brownian particles in a fluctuating harmonic trap

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Frydel, Derek
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Frydel, Derek
author_facet Frydel, Derek
contents We consider passive Brownian particles trapped in an "imperfect" harmonic trap. The trap is imperfect because it is randomly turned off and on, and as a result, particles fail to equilibrate. Another way to think about this is to say that a harmonic trap is time-dependent on account of its strength evolving stochastically in time. Particles in such a system are passive and activity arises through external control of a trapping potential, thus, no internal energy is used to power particle motion. A stationary Fokker-Planck equation of this system can be represented as a third-order differential equation, and its solution, a stationary distribution, can be represented as a superposition of Gaussian distributions for different strengths of a harmonic trap. This permits us to interpret a stationary system as a system in equilibrium with quenched disorder.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_12213
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Statistical mechanics of passive Brownian particles in a fluctuating harmonic trap
Frydel, Derek
Statistical Mechanics
We consider passive Brownian particles trapped in an "imperfect" harmonic trap. The trap is imperfect because it is randomly turned off and on, and as a result, particles fail to equilibrate. Another way to think about this is to say that a harmonic trap is time-dependent on account of its strength evolving stochastically in time. Particles in such a system are passive and activity arises through external control of a trapping potential, thus, no internal energy is used to power particle motion. A stationary Fokker-Planck equation of this system can be represented as a third-order differential equation, and its solution, a stationary distribution, can be represented as a superposition of Gaussian distributions for different strengths of a harmonic trap. This permits us to interpret a stationary system as a system in equilibrium with quenched disorder.
title Statistical mechanics of passive Brownian particles in a fluctuating harmonic trap
topic Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12213