
Brownian particles in periodic potentials: coarse-graining versus fine structure
Lucianno Defaveri1, Eli Barkai2, and David A. Kessler1
1Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel and
2Department of Physics, Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel
We study the motion of an overdamped particle connected to a thermal heat bath in the presence
of an external periodic potential in one dimension. When we coarse-grain, i.e., bin the particle
positions using bin sizes that are larger than the periodicity of the potential, the packet of spreading
particles, all starting from a common origin, converges to a normal distribution centered at the
origin with a mean-squared displacement that grows as 2D∗t, with an effective diffusion constant
that is smaller than that of a freely diffusing particle. We examine the interplay between this coarse-
grained description and the fine structure of the density, which is given by the Boltzmann-Gibbs
(BG) factor e−V(x)/kBT, the latter being non-normalizable. We explain this result and construct a
theory of observables using the Fokker-Planck equation. These observables are classified as those
that are related to the BG fine structure, like the energy or occupation times, while others, like
the positional moments, for long times, converge to those of the large-scale description. Entropy
falls into a special category as it has a coarse-grained and a fine structure description. The basic
thermodynamic formula F=T S −Eis extended to this far-from-equilibrium system. The ergodic
properties are also studied using tools from infinite ergodic theory.
I. INTRODUCTION
Problems involving diffusion of atoms and molecules
on surfaces, lattices, and general periodic potentials have
been studied for decades [1–11] due to their applicability
to a wide range of systems such as diffusion of adatoms
[4,12], of proteins on a membrane [13] and in one dimen-
sional corrugated channels [14–22]. Brownian particles
in a one-dimensional periodic potential landscape V(x),
stretching across all space (−∞,∞), cannot reach a state
of equilibrium since, due to the nonbinding nature of the
potential, the equilibrium distribution is not normalized
as R∞
−∞ e−V(x)/kBTdx → ∞, where kBis the Boltzmann
constant and Tthe temperature of the environment. For
short times, particles moving in a periodic lattice be-
come stuck in attractive regions, or wells, of the poten-
tial. Eventually, however, the particles will experience
an environmental fluctuation large enough to overcome
the finite potential barrier and will reach a neighboring
well [23,24]. A schematic representation of this model is
shown in Fig. 1. This macroscopic motion is character-
ized by an effective diffusion constant D∗which is always
smaller than the free diffusion constant D[1].
Despite these types of systems being unable to reach
a state of true equilibrium and therefore not obeying the
ergodic hypothesis, the Boltzmann-Gibbs factor, though
non-normalizable, can still be used to study the prop-
erties of the system, as is the case with other non-
confining potentials [25–27], logarithmic potentials used
in subrecoil-laser-cooled gases [28], diffusion processes
with heterogeneous diffusion fields [29,30] and random
potentials used in Sinai diffusion [31]. We show here
that this non-normalizable state, i.e., the Boltzmann-
Gibbs factor, gives the fine structure of the probabil-
ity packet, and discuss the consequences of this. This
non-normalized state was foreseen by Sivan and Farago
[32,33]. By fine structure, we mean the density fluctu-
ations on the scale of the period of the potential, which,
in the long time limit, is of course much smaller than the
scale associated with diffusion √2D∗t.
FIG. 1. A schematic representation of the Brownian motion of
non-interacting particles, using the potential in Eq. (1). The
lattice period is a, the height of the potential barrier between
wells is V0and the system is at temperature T.
Experimental advances in optical lattices [34,35] which
allow experimentalists to probe the fine-grained nature
of systems, motivate us to ask: how does the interplay
between the fine structure and more coarse-grained de-
scriptions, which are both present in the probability den-
sity function (PDF), affect the properties of observables?
What are their ergodic properties? Our aim in this pa-
per is to answer those questions. It should be noted that
one may observe the density of the spreading packet of
particles either at a coarse-grained level or by paying at-
tention to the fine structure. That it is say, when we
observe the concentration of many non-interacting parti-
cles in the periodic potential, we may bin the data with
bin sizes either smaller or greater than the period of the
lattice. The latter case, which we call coarse-graining,
will lead to the loss of information, though it is some-
times needed, since in the long time limit, within a small
bin, we may not find a statistically sufficient number of
particles. The coarse-graining issue is then translated to
other observables, like entropy. As explained below, it
can generally result in widely different points of view on
arXiv:2210.10935v2 [cond-mat.stat-mech] 14 Feb 2023