TY - JOUR A1 - Vitali, Silvia A1 - Sposini, Vittoria A1 - Sliusarenko, Oleksii A1 - Paradisi, Paolo A1 - Castellani, Gastone A1 - Pagnini, Gianni T1 - Langevin equation in complex media and anomalous diffusion JF - Interface : journal of the Royal Society N2 - The problem of biological motion is a very intriguing and topical issue. Many efforts are being focused on the development of novel modelling approaches for the description of anomalous diffusion in biological systems, such as the very complex and heterogeneous cell environment. Nevertheless, many questions are still open, such as the joint manifestation of statistical features in agreement with different models that can also be somewhat alternative to each other, e.g. continuous time random walk and fractional Brownian motion. To overcome these limitations, we propose a stochastic diffusion model with additive noise and linear friction force (linear Langevin equation), thus involving the explicit modelling of velocity dynamics. The complexity of the medium is parametrized via a population of intensity parameters (relaxation time and diffusivity of velocity), thus introducing an additional randomness, in addition to white noise, in the particle's dynamics. We prove that, for proper distributions of these parameters, we can get both Gaussian anomalous diffusion, fractional diffusion and its generalizations. KW - anomalous diffusion KW - heterogeneous media KW - biological transport KW - Gaussian processes KW - space-time fractional diffusion equation KW - fractional Brownian motion Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2018.0282 SN - 1742-5689 SN - 1742-5662 VL - 15 IS - 145 PB - Royal Society CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sliusarenko, Oleksii Yu A1 - Vitali, Silvia A1 - Sposini, Vittoria A1 - Paradisi, Paolo A1 - Chechkin, Aleksei V. A1 - Castellani, Gastone A1 - Pagnini, Gianni T1 - Finite-energy Levy-type motion through heterogeneous ensemble of Brownian particles JF - Journal of physics : A, Mathematical and theoretical N2 - Complex systems are known to display anomalous diffusion, whose signature is a space/time scaling x similar to t(delta) with delta not equal 1/2 in the probability density function (PDF). Anomalous diffusion can emerge jointly with both Gaussian, e.g. fractional Brownian motion, and power-law decaying distributions, e.g. Levy Flights or Levy Walks (LWs). Levy flights get anomalous scaling, but, being jumps of any size allowed even at short times, have infinite position variance, infinite energy and discontinuous paths. LWs, which are based on random trapping events, overcome these limitations: they resemble a Levy-type power-law distribution that is truncated in the large displacement range and have finite moments, finite energy and, even with discontinuous velocity, they are continuous. However, LWs do not take into account the role of strong heterogeneity in many complex systems, such as biological transport in the crowded cell environment. In this work we propose and discuss a model describing a heterogeneous ensemble of Brownian particles (HEBP). Velocity of each single particle obeys a standard underdamped Langevin equation for the velocity, with linear friction term and additive Gaussian noise. Each particle is characterized by its own relaxation time and velocity diffusivity. We show that, for proper distributions of relaxation time and velocity diffusivity, the HEBP resembles some LW statistical features, in particular power-law decaying PDF, long-range correlations and anomalous diffusion, at the same time keeping finite position moments and finite energy. The main differences between the HEBP model and two different LWs are investigated, finding that, even when both velocity and position PDFs are similar, they differ in four main aspects: (i) LWs are biscaling, while HEBP is monoscaling; (ii) a transition from anomalous (delta = 1/2) to normal (delta = 1/2) diffusion in the long-time regime is seen in the HEBP and not in LWs; (iii) the power-law index of the position PDF and the space/time diffusion scaling are independent in the HEBP, while they both depend on the scaling of the interevent time PDF in LWs; (iv) at variance with LWs, our HEBP model obeys a fluctuation-dissipation theorem. KW - anomalous diffusion KW - heterogeneous ensemble of Brownian particles KW - biological transport KW - Langevin equation KW - Gaussian processes KW - fractional diffusion KW - Levy walk Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8121/aafe90 SN - 1751-8113 SN - 1751-8121 VL - 52 IS - 9 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER -