Analysis on the origin of directed current from a class of microscopic chaotic fluctuations

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2004 Mar;69(3 Pt 1):031103. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.69.031103. Epub 2004 Mar 16.

Abstract

We show that the Perron-Frobenius equation of microscopic chaos based on double symmetric maps leads to an inhomogeneous Smoluchowski equation with a source term. Our perturbative analysis reveals that the source term gives rise to a directed current for a strongly damped particle in a spatially periodic potential. In addition, our result proves that in the zeroth-order limit, the position distribution of the particle obeys the Smoluchowski equation even though the fluctuating force is deterministic.