TY  - JOUR
A1  - Cherstvy, Andrey G.
A1  - Metzler, Ralf
T1  - Ergodicity breaking, ageing, and confinement in generalized diffusion processes with position and time dependent diffusivity
JF  - Journal of statistical mechanics: theory and experiment
N2  - We study generalized anomalous diffusion processes whose diffusion coefficient D(x, t) similar to D-0x(alpha)t(beta) depends on both the position x of the test particle and the process time t. This process thus combines the features of scaled Brownian motion and heterogeneous diffusion parent processes. We compute the ensemble and time averaged mean squared displacements of this generalized diffusion process. The scaling exponent of the ensemble averaged mean squared displacement is shown to be the product of the critical exponents of the parent processes, and describes both subdiffusive and superdiffusive systems. We quantify the amplitude fluctuations of the time averaged mean squared displacement as function of the length of the time series and the lag time. In particular, we observe a weak ergodicity breaking of this generalized diffusion process: even in the long time limit the ensemble and time averaged mean squared displacements are strictly disparate. When we start to observe this process some time after its initiation we observe distinct features of ageing. We derive a universal ageing factor for the time averaged mean squared displacement containing all information on the ageing time and the measurement time. External confinement is shown to alter the magnitudes and statistics of the ensemble and time averaged mean squared displacements.
KW  - diffusion
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-5468/2015/05/P05010
SN  - 1742-5468
PB  - IOP Publ. Ltd.
CY  - Bristol
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Shin, Jaeoh
A1  - Cherstvy, Andrey G.
A1  - Kim, Won Kyu
A1  - Metzler, Ralf
T1  - Facilitation of polymer looping and giant polymer diffusivity in crowded solutions of active particles
JF  - New journal of physics : the open-access journal for physics
N2  - We study the dynamics of polymer chains in a bath of self-propelled particles (SPP) by extensive Langevin dynamics simulations in a two-dimensional model system. Specifically, we analyse the polymer looping properties versus the SPP activity and investigate how the presence of the active particles alters the chain conformational statistics. We find that SPPs tend to extend flexible polymer chains, while they rather compactify stiffer semiflexible polymers, in agreement with previous results. Here we show that higher activities of SPPs yield a higher effective temperature of the bath and thus facilitate the looping kinetics of a passive polymer chain. We explicitly compute the looping probability and looping time in a wide range of the model parameters. We also analyse the motion of a monomeric tracer particle and the polymer's centre of mass in the presence of the active particles in terms of the time averaged mean squared displacement, revealing a giant diffusivity enhancement for the polymer chain via SPP pooling. Our results are applicable to rationalising the dimensions and looping kinetics of biopolymers at constantly fluctuating and often actively driven conditions inside biological cells or in suspensions of active colloidal particles or bacteria cells.
KW  - diffusion
KW  - active transport
KW  - polymers
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/17/11/113008
SN  - 1367-2630
VL  - 17
PB  - IOP Publ. Ltd.
CY  - Bristol
ER  -