TY - JOUR A1 - Mutothya, Nicholas Mwilu A1 - Xu, Yong A1 - Li, Yongge A1 - Metzler, Ralf T1 - Characterising stochastic motion in heterogeneous media driven by coloured non-Gaussian noise JF - Journal of physics : A, Mathematical and theoretical N2 - We study the stochastic motion of a test particle in a heterogeneous medium in terms of a position dependent diffusion coefficient mimicking measured deterministic diffusivity gradients in biological cells or the inherent heterogeneity of geophysical systems. Compared to previous studies we here investigate the effect of the interplay of anomalous diffusion effected by position dependent diffusion coefficients and coloured non-Gaussian noise. The latter is chosen to be distributed according to Tsallis' q-distribution, representing a popular example for a non-extensive statistic. We obtain the ensemble and time averaged mean squared displacements for this generalised process and establish its non-ergodic properties as well as analyse the non-Gaussian nature of the associated displacement distribution. We consider both non-stratified and stratified environments. KW - diffusion KW - anomalous diffusion KW - non-extensive statistics KW - coloured KW - noise KW - heterogeneous diffusion process Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8121/abfba6 SN - 1751-8113 SN - 1751-8121 VL - 54 IS - 29 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Prokopovic, Vladimir Z. A1 - Vikulina, Anna S. A1 - Sustr, David A1 - Duschl, Claus A1 - Volodkin, Dmitry T1 - Biodegradation-Resistant Multilayers Coated with Gold Nanoparticles. Toward a Tailor-made Artificial Extracellular Matrix JF - Journal of colloid and interface science N2 - Polymer multicomponent coatings such as multilayers mimic an extracellular, matrix (ECM) that attracts significant attention for the use of the multilayers as functional supports for advanced cell culture and tissue engineering. Herein, biodegradation and molecular transport in hyaluronan/polylysine multilayers coated with gold nanoparticles were described. Nanoparticle coating acts as a semipermeable barrier that governs molecular transport into/from the multilayers, and makes them biodegradation-resistant. Model protein lysozyme (mimics of ECM-soluble signals) diffuses into the multilayers as fast- and, slow-diffusing populations existing in an equilibrium,. Such a. composite system may have high potential to be exploited as degradation-resistant drug-delivery platforms suitable for cell-based applications. KW - hyaluronic acid KW - polylysine KW - diffusion KW - semipermeable KW - fluorescence recovery after photobleaching KW - layer-by-layer KW - enzymatic degradation KW - cell adhesion Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.6b10095 SN - 1944-8244 VL - 8 SP - 24345 EP - 24349 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stojkoski, Viktor A1 - Sandev, Trifce A1 - Kocarev, Ljupco A1 - Pal, Arnab T1 - Autocorrelation functions and ergodicity in diffusion with stochastic resetting JF - Journal of physics : A, Mathematical and theoretical N2 - Diffusion with stochastic resetting is a paradigm of resetting processes. Standard renewal or master equation approach are typically used to study steady state and other transport properties such as average, mean squared displacement etc. What remains less explored is the two time point correlation functions whose evaluation is often daunting since it requires the implementation of the exact time dependent probability density functions of the resetting processes which are unknown for most of the problems. We adopt a different approach that allows us to write a stochastic solution for a single trajectory undergoing resetting. Moments and the autocorrelation functions between any two times along the trajectory can then be computed directly using the laws of total expectation. Estimation of autocorrelation functions turns out to be pivotal for investigating the ergodic properties of various observables for this canonical model. In particular, we investigate two observables (i) sample mean which is widely used in economics and (ii) time-averaged-mean-squared-displacement (TAMSD) which is of acute interest in physics. We find that both diffusion and drift-diffusion processes with resetting are ergodic at the mean level unlike their reset-free counterparts. In contrast, resetting renders ergodicity breaking in the TAMSD while both the stochastic processes are ergodic when resetting is absent. We quantify these behaviors with detailed analytical study and corroborate with extensive numerical simulations. Our results can be verified in experimental set-ups that can track single particle trajectories and thus have strong implications in understanding the physics of resetting. KW - autocorrelations KW - ergodicity KW - diffusion KW - stochastic resetting Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8121/ac4ce9 SN - 1751-8113 SN - 1751-8121 VL - 55 IS - 10 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Doerries, Timo J. A1 - Chechkin, Aleksei V. A1 - Metzler, Ralf T1 - Apparent anomalous diffusion and non-Gaussian distributions in a simple mobile-immobile transport model with Poissonian switching JF - Interface : journal of the Royal Society N2 - We analyse mobile-immobile transport of particles that switch between the mobile and immobile phases with finite rates. Despite this seemingly simple assumption of Poissonian switching, we unveil a rich transport dynamics including significant transient anomalous diffusion and non-Gaussian displacement distributions. Our discussion is based on experimental parameters for tau proteins in neuronal cells, but the results obtained here are expected to be of relevance for a broad class of processes in complex systems. Specifically, we obtain that, when the mean binding time is significantly longer than the mean mobile time, transient anomalous diffusion is observed at short and intermediate time scales, with a strong dependence on the fraction of initially mobile and immobile particles. We unveil a Laplace distribution of particle displacements at relevant intermediate time scales. For any initial fraction of mobile particles, the respective mean squared displacement (MSD) displays a plateau. Moreover, we demonstrate a short-time cubic time dependence of the MSD for immobile tracers when initially all particles are immobile. KW - diffusion KW - mobile-immobile model KW - tau proteins Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2022.0233 SN - 1742-5689 SN - 1742-5662 VL - 19 IS - 192 PB - Royal Society CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Guggenberger, Tobias A1 - Chechkin, Aleksei A1 - Metzler, Ralf T1 - Absence of stationary states and non-Boltzmann distributions of fractional Brownian motion in shallow external potentials JF - New journal of physics : the open-access journal for physics N2 - We study the diffusive motion of a particle in a subharmonic potential of the form U(x) = |x|( c ) (0 < c < 2) driven by long-range correlated, stationary fractional Gaussian noise xi ( alpha )(t) with 0 < alpha <= 2. In the absence of the potential the particle exhibits free fractional Brownian motion with anomalous diffusion exponent alpha. While for an harmonic external potential the dynamics converges to a Gaussian stationary state, from extensive numerical analysis we here demonstrate that stationary states for shallower than harmonic potentials exist only as long as the relation c > 2(1 - 1/alpha) holds. We analyse the motion in terms of the mean squared displacement and (when it exists) the stationary probability density function. Moreover we discuss analogies of non-stationarity of Levy flights in shallow external potentials. KW - diffusion KW - Boltzmann distribution KW - fractional Brownian motion Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/ac7b3c SN - 1367-2630 VL - 24 IS - 7 PB - Dt. Physikalische Ges. CY - [Bad Honnef] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schwarzl, Maria A1 - Godec, Aljaz A1 - Oshanin, Gleb A1 - Metzler, Ralf T1 - A single predator charging a herd of prey: effects of self volume and predator-prey decision-making JF - Journal of physics : A, Mathematical and theoretical N2 - We study the degree of success of a single predator hunting a herd of prey on a two-dimensional square lattice landscape. We explicitly consider the self volume of the prey restraining their dynamics on the lattice. The movement of both predator and prey is chosen to include an intelligent, decision making step based on their respective sighting ranges, the radius in which they can detect the other species (prey cannot recognise each other besides the self volume interaction): after spotting each other the motion of prey and predator turns from a nearest neighbour random walk into directed escape or chase, respectively. We consider a large range of prey densities and sighting ranges and compute the mean first passage time for a predator to catch a prey as well as characterise the effective dynamics of the hunted prey. We find that the prey's sighting range dominates their life expectancy and the predator profits more from a bad eyesight of the prey than from his own good eye sight. We characterise the dynamics in terms of the mean distance between the predator and the nearest prey. It turns out that effectively the dynamics of this distance coordinate can be captured in terms of a simple Ornstein–Uhlenbeck picture. Reducing the many-body problem to a simple two-body problem by imagining predator and nearest prey to be connected by an effective Hookean bond, all features of the model such as prey density and sighting ranges merge into the effective binding constant. KW - first passage process KW - diffusion KW - predator-prey model Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8113/49/22/225601 SN - 1751-8113 SN - 1751-8121 VL - 49 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Grebenkov, Denis S. A1 - Metzler, Ralf A1 - Oshanin, Gleb T1 - A molecular relay race: sequential first-passage events to the terminal reaction centre in a cascade of diffusion controlled processes JF - New Journal of Physics (NJP) N2 - We consider a sequential cascade of molecular first-reaction events towards a terminal reaction centre in which each reaction step is controlled by diffusive motion of the particles. The model studied here represents a typical reaction setting encountered in diverse molecular biology systems, in which, e.g. a signal transduction proceeds via a series of consecutive 'messengers': the first messenger has to find its respective immobile target site triggering a launch of the second messenger, the second messenger seeks its own target site and provokes a launch of the third messenger and so on, resembling a relay race in human competitions. For such a molecular relay race taking place in infinite one-, two- and three-dimensional systems, we find exact expressions for the probability density function of the time instant of the terminal reaction event, conditioned on preceding successful reaction events on an ordered array of target sites. The obtained expressions pertain to the most general conditions: number of intermediate stages and the corresponding diffusion coefficients, the sizes of the target sites, the distances between them, as well as their reactivities are arbitrary. KW - diffusion KW - reaction cascade KW - first passage time Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/ac1e42 SN - 1367-2630 VL - 23 PB - IOP - Institute of Physics Publishing CY - Bristol ER -