Diffusion in a rough potential: Dual-scale structure and regime crossovers

Abstract

Diffusion in a "rough" potential parameterized by a reaction coordinate q is relevant to a wide spectrum of problems ranging from protein folding and charge transport in complex media to colloidal stabilization and self-assembly. This work studies the case of a potential having a coarse-scale structure with characteristic energy barrier ΔU and period ℓ and fine-scale "roughness" of magnitude ΔU′ ≤ ΔU and small period ℓ′ |Δq| > ΔqIII and exponential decay over time for |Δq|