English

Random walk model for coordinate dependent diffusion in a force field

Statistical Mechanics 2020-08-27 v3

Abstract

In this paper we develop a random walk model on lattice for coordinate dependent diffusion at constant temperature in contact with a heat bath. We employ here a coordinate dependent waiting time of the random walker to make the diffusivity coordinate dependent. The presence of a confining conservative force is modeled by appropriately breaking the isotropy of the jumps of the random walker to its nearest neighbors. We show that the equilibrium is characterized by the position distribution which is of modified Boltzmann form. We also show that, in such systems with coordinate dependent diffusivity, the modified Boltzmann distribution correctly captures the transition over a potential barrier as opposed to the Boltzmann distribution.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1912.11529,
  title  = {Random walk model for coordinate dependent diffusion in a force field},
  author = {Rohan Maniar and A. Bhattacharyay},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.11529},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

9 pages and 15 figures. More clarifications on the method are given in this version along with some corrections in the text

R2 v1 2026-06-23T12:56:04.985Z