Detectable inertial effects on Brownian transport through narrow pores

TL;DR

This paper studies how inertia affects Brownian particle transport in narrow channels, revealing that inertial effects become significant when channel constrictions are smaller than a certain diffusion length, impacting colloidal system behavior.

Contribution

It demonstrates the importance of inertial corrections in narrow-channel Brownian transport, highlighting their dependence on channel geometry, temperature, and fluid viscosity.

Findings

Inertial effects are significant in narrow constrictions.

Transport sensitivity to fluid viscosity in narrow channels.

Inertial corrections depend on particle diffusion length.

Abstract

We investigate the transport of suspended Brownian particles dc driven along corrugated narrow channels in a regime of finite damping. We demonstrate that inertial corrections cannot be neglected as long as the width of the channel bottlenecks is smaller than an appropriate particle diffusion length, which depends on both, the temperature and the strength of the dc drive. Therefore, transport through sufficiently narrow constrictions turns out to be sensitive to the viscosity of the suspension fluid. Applications to colloidal systems are discussed.