Stochastic pump of interacting particles

TL;DR

This paper studies how time- and space-varying periodic potentials can induce directed particle currents in interacting Brownian particles, revealing complex behaviors like current reversal and symmetry effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analytic approach for a lattice model of interacting particles in dynamic potentials, uncovering new phenomena and proposing experimental tests.

Findings

Directed current generated by specific phase relations in potentials

Particle-hole symmetry influences current behavior

Current reversal occurs with changing particle density

Abstract

We consider the overdamped motion of Brownian particles, interacting via particle exclusion, in an external potential that varies with time and space. We show that periodic potentials that maintain specific position-dependent phase relations generate time-averaged directed current of particles. We obtain analytic results for a lattice version of the model using a recently developed perturbative approach. Many interesting features like particle-hole symmetry, current reversal with changing density, and system-size dependence of current are obtained. We propose possible experiments to test our predictions.