13,737 research outputs found
Diffusion of finite-size particles in confined geometries
The diffusion of finite-size hard-core interacting particles in two- or three-dimensional confined domains is considered in the limit that the confinement dimensions become comparable to the particle’s dimensions. The result is a nonlinear diffusion equation for the one-particle probability density function, with an overall collective diffusion that depends on both the excluded-volume and the narrow confinement. By including both these effects the equation is able to interpolate between severe confinement (for example, single-file diffusion) and unconfined diffusion. Numerical solutions of both the effective nonlinear diffusion equation and the stochastic particle system are presented and compared. As an application, the case of diffusion under a ratchet potential is considered, and the change in transport properties due to excluded-volume and confinement effects is examined
Asymptotic analysis of noisy fitness maximization, applied to metabolism and growth
We consider a population dynamics model coupling cell growth to a diffusion
in the space of metabolic phenotypes as it can be obtained from realistic
constraints-based modelling. In the asymptotic regime of slow diffusion, that
coincides with the relevant experimental range, the resulting non-linear
Fokker-Planck equation is solved for the steady state in the WKB approximation
that maps it into the ground state of a quantum particle in an Airy potential
plus a centrifugal term. We retrieve scaling laws for growth rate fluctuations
and time response with respect to the distance from the maximum growth rate
suggesting that suboptimal populations can have a faster response to
perturbations.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figure
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