Biased diffusion with aggregation of particles in a narrow channel

V. RUIZ BARLETT; M. HOYUELOS; H. O. MÁRTIN

PHYSICA A - STATISTICAL AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Año: 2008 vol. 387 p. 4623 - 4629

0378-4371

We consider a fluid that drags impurities in a narrow channel.  Theimpurities are particles of a size comparable to the channeldiameter. When two particles collide they produce a cluster that cannot move through the medium and remain immobile.  When theaccumulation of clusters saturate the system the entrance ofimpurities is no longer possible. The system is characterized by theentrance flux of impurities, J, and the jump probability per unittime, P, in the direction of the flow. We study a discretizedmodel, in one dimension, that captures the basic behaviour of thesystem. Numerical simulations with Monte Carlo method and acontinuous description with approximate differential equations wereperformed. Two different regimes were identified: drift limitedregime (J >> P) and entrance limited regime (J << P).