Nonergodic subdiffusion from transient interactions with heterogeneous partners

C. Charalambous, G. Muñoz-Gil, A. Celi, M. F. Garcia-Parajo, M. Lewenstein, C. Manzo, and M. A. García-March
Phys. Rev. E 95, 032403 – Published 6 March 2017

Abstract

Spatiotemporal disorder has been recently associated to the occurrence of anomalous nonergodic diffusion of molecular components in biological systems, but the underlying microscopic mechanism is still unclear. We introduce a model in which a particle performs continuous Brownian motion with changes of diffusion coefficients induced by transient molecular interactions with diffusive binding partners. In spite of the exponential distribution of waiting times, the model shows subdiffusion and nonergodicity similar to the heavy-tailed continuous time random walk. The dependence of these properties on the density of binding partners is analyzed and discussed. Our work provides an experimentally testable microscopic model to investigate the nature of nonergodicity in disordered media.

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  • Received 27 July 2016
  • Revised 20 December 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.95.032403

©2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Statistical Physics & ThermodynamicsPhysics of Living Systems

Authors & Affiliations

C. Charalambous1, G. Muñoz-Gil1, A. Celi1, M. F. Garcia-Parajo1,2, M. Lewenstein1,2, C. Manzo1,3,*, and M. A. García-March1,†

  • 1ICFO-Institut de Ciències Fotòniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, 08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain
  • 2ICREA - Pg. Lluís Companys 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain
  • 3Universitat de Vic - Universitat Central de Catalunya (UVic-UCC), C. de la Laura, 13, 08500 Vic, Spain

  • *carlo.manzo@uvic.cat
  • miguel.garcia-march@icfo.es

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Issue

Vol. 95, Iss. 3 — March 2017

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