Universal Fluctuations of Single-Particle Diffusivity in Quenched Environment

Takuma Akimoto, Eli Barkai, Keiji Saito

Published 2016-04-21Version 1

Local diffusion coefficients in disordered materials such as living cells are highly heterogeneous. Quenched disorder is utilized substantially to study such complex systems, whereas its analytical treatment is difficult to handle. We consider finite systems with quenched disorder in order to investigate the effects of sample disorder fluctuations and confinement on single-particle diffusivity. While the system is ergodic in a single disorder realization, the time-averaged mean squared displacement depends on the disorder, i.e., the system is ergodic but non-self-averaging. We find that the inverse Levy distribution is a universal distribution for diffusivity in the sense that it can be applied for arbitrary dimensions. Quantifying the degree of the non-self-averaging effect, we show that fluctuations of single-particle diffusivity far exceed the corresponding annealed theory and also find confinement effects. The relevance for experimental situations is also discussed.