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arXiv · cond-mat/0311117

Statistically Locked-in Transport Through Periodic Potential Landscapes

Ajay Gopinathan·David G. Grier
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Abstract

Classical particles driven through periodically modulated potential energy landscapes are predicted to follow a Devil's staircase hierarchy of commensurate trajectories depending on the orientation of the driving force. Recent experiments on colloidal spheres flowing through arrays of optical traps do indeed reveal such a hierarchy,but not with the predicted structure. The microscopic trajectories, moreover,appear to be random, with commensurability emerging only in a statistical sense. We introduce an idealized model for periodically modulated transport in the presence of randomness that captures both the structure and statistics of such statistically locked-in states.

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Ajay Gopinathan, David G. Grier. 2003-11-05. Statistically Locked-in Transport Through Periodic Potential Landscapes. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.92.130602

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