Relaxation high-temperature ratchets

Abstract

We consider the overdamped motion of a Brownian particle in an asymmetric spatially periodic potential which fluctuates periodically in time, under assumption of finite duration of the relaxation response of the system on deterministic dichotomous fluctuations. It is assumed that the period of these fluctuations is much larger than the characteristic diffusion time and the potential barrier height is small as compared to the thermal energy (an adiabatic high-temperature flashing ratchet). We derive an analytical expression for the average particle velocity, which is concretized for a saw-tooth potential profile. It is revealed the different, linear and quadratic, asymptotic behavior of the average velocity as a function of the relaxation time for extremely and not extremely asymmetric potential profiles, respectively. The result is interpreted in terms of the self-similar representation. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.