Brownian transport controlled by dichotomic and thermal fluctuations Original Research Article

We study transport of Brownian particles in spatially periodic structures, driven by both thermal equilibrium fluctuations and dichotomic noise of zero mean values. Introducing specific scaling, we show that the dimensionless Newton-Langevin type equation governing the motion of Brownian particles is very well approximated by the overdamped dynamics; inertial effects can be neglected because for generic systems dimensionless mass is many orders less than a dimensionless friction coefficient. An exact probability current, proportional to the mean drift velocity of particles, is obtained for a piecewise linear spatially periodic potential. We analyze in detail properties of the macroscopic averaged motion of particles. In dependence on statistics of both sources of fluctuations, the directed transport of particles exhibits such distinctive non-monotonic behavior as: bell-shaped dependence (there exists optimal statistics of fluctuations maximizing velocity) and reversal in the direction of macroscopic motion (there exists critical statistics at which the drift velocity is zero).