Particle Transport with Asymmetric Unbiased Forces and Entropic Barrier

Abstract

Transport of a Brownian particle moving along the axis of a three-dimensional (3D) symmetric and periodic tube is investigated in the presence of asymmetric unbiased forces. It is found that in the presence of entropic barrier, the asymmetry of the unbiased forces is a way of inducing a net particle current. The particle current is a peaked function of temperature, which indicates that the thermal noise may facilitate the transport even in the presence of entropic barrier. There exists an optimized radius at the bottleneck at which the particle current takes its maximum value. The current can be influenced by the slope of tube walls and there exists an optimized slope for which the particle current takes its maximum value.