Weak disorder strongly improves the selective enhancement of diffusion in a tilted periodic potential

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that introducing weak, static disorder into a tilted periodic potential can significantly amplify the diffusion enhancement of an overdamped Brownian particle, aligning well with experimental data.

Contribution

It reveals that weak disorder can dramatically increase diffusion peaks in tilted periodic potentials, a novel insight into diffusion control mechanisms.

Findings

Weak disorder boosts diffusion peaks by orders of magnitude.

Theoretical predictions match experimental observations.

Disorder enhances diffusion beyond previous expectations.

Abstract

The diffusion of an overdamped Brownian particle in a tilted periodic potential is known to exhibit a pronounced enhancement over the free thermal diffusion within a small interval of tilt-values. Here we show that weak disorder in the form of small, time-independent deviations from a strictly spatially periodic potential may further boost this diffusion peak by orders of magnitude. Our general theoretical predictions are in excellent agreement with experimental observations.