Propagator for a driven Brownian particle in step potentials

TL;DR

This paper presents an iterative method to analytically calculate the propagator for driven Brownian particles in step potentials, providing exact solutions for single steps and approximations for multiple steps, applicable to related systems.

Contribution

Introduces a novel iterative calculation scheme for propagators in step potential systems, including a closed-form solution for a single step and an approximation method for multiple steps.

Findings

Exact propagator for single step potential derived.

Approximate propagator for multiple steps valid for short times.

Applicable to Brownian ratchets with boundary conditions similar to step potentials.

Abstract

Although driven Brownian particles are ubiquitous in stochastic dynamics and often serve as paradigmatic model systems for many aspects of stochastic thermodynamics, fully analytically solvable models are few and far between. In this paper, we introduce an iterative calculation scheme, similar to the method of images in electrostatics, that enables one to obtain the propagator if the potential consists of a finite number of steps. For the special case of a single potential step, this method converges after one iteration, thus providing an expression for the propagator in closed form. In all other cases, the iteration results in an approximation that holds for times smaller than some characteristic timescale that depends on the number of iterations performed. This method can also be applied to a related class of systems like Brownian ratchets, which do not formally contain step potentials in their definition, but impose the same kind of boundary conditions that are caused by potential steps.