Anomalous diffusion in branched elliptical structure

Abstract

Diffusion in narrow curved channels with dead-ends as in extracellular space in the biological tissues, e.g., brain, tumors, muscles, etc. is a geometrically induced complex diffusion and is relevant to different kinds of biological, physical, and chemical systems. In this paper, we study the effects of geometry and confinement on the diffusion process in an elliptical comb-like structure and analyze its statistical properties. The ellipse domain whose boundary has the polar equation with 0 < e < 1, θ ∈ [0,2π], and b as a constant, can be obtained through stretched radius r such that Υ = r ρ (θ) with r ∈ [0,1]. We suppose that, for fixed radius r = R, an elliptical motion takes place and is interspersed with a radial motion inward and outward of the ellipse. The probability distribution function (PDF) in the structure and the marginal PDF and mean square displacement (MSD) along the backbone are obtained numerically. The results show that a transient sub-diffusion behavior dominates the process for a time followed by a saturating state. The sub-diffusion regime and saturation threshold are affected by the length of the elliptical channel lateral branch and its curvature.