Mean squared displacement

In statistical mechanics, the mean squared displacement (MSD, also mean square displacement, average squared displacement, or mean square fluctuation) is a measure of the deviation of the position of a particle with respect to a reference position over time. It is the most common measure of the spatial extent of random motion, and can be thought of as measuring the portion of the system "explored" by the random walker. In the realm of biophysics and environmental engineering, the Mean Squared Displacement is measured over time to determine if a particle is spreading slowly due to diffusion, or if an advective force is also contributing. Another relevant concept, the variance-related diameter (VRD, which is twice the square root of MSD), is also used in studying the transportation and mixing phenomena in the realm of environmental engineering. It prominently appears in the Debye–Waller factor (describing vibrations within the solid state) and in the Langevin equation (describing diffus

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Accounting for inertia effects to access the high-frequency microrheology of viscoelastic fluids

Elena Bertseva, László Forró, Sylvia Jeney, Frank Scheffold

We study the Brownian motion of microbeads immersed in water and in a viscoelastic wormlike micelles solution by optical trapping interferometry and diffusing wave spectroscopy. Through the mean-square displacement obtained from both techniques, we deduce the mechanical properties of the fluids at high frequencies by explicitly accounting for inertia effects of the particle and the surrounding fluid at short time scales. For wormlike micelle solutions, we recover the 3/4 scaling exponent for the loss modulus over two decades in frequency as predicted by the theory for semiflexible polymers.

Amer Physical Soc2014

Out-of-equilibrium dynamical equations of infinite-dimensional particle systems I. The isotropic case

Elisabeth Agoritsas

We consider the Langevin dynamics of a many-body system of interacting particles in d dimensions, in a very general setting suitable to model several out-of-equilibrium situations, such as liquid and glass rheology, active self-propelled particles, and glassy aging dynamics. The pair interaction potential is generic, and can be chosen to model colloids, atomic liquids, and granular materials. In the limit d -> infinity, we show that the dynamics can be exactly reduced to a single one-dimensional effective stochastic equation, with an effective thermal bath described by kernels that have to be determined self-consistently. We present two complementary derivations, via a dynamical cavity method and via a path-integral approach. From the effective stochastic equation, one can compute dynamical observables such as pressure, shear stress, particle mean-square displacement, and the associated response function. As an application of our results, we derive dynamically the 'state-following' equations that describe the response of a glass to quasistatic perturbations, thus bypassing the use of replicas. The article is written in a modular way, that allows the reader to skip the details of the derivations and focus on the physical setting and the main results.

2019

Out-of-equilibrium dynamical equations of infinite-dimensional particle systems. II. The anisotropic case under shear strain

Elisabeth Agoritsas

As an extension of the isotropic setting presented in the companion paper Agoritsas et al (2019 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 52 144002), we consider the Langevin dynamics of a many-body system of pairwise interacting particles in d dimensions, submitted to an external shear strain. We show that the anisotropy introduced by the shear strain can be simply addressed by moving into the co-shearing frame, leading to simple dynamical mean field equations in the limit d -> infinity. The dynamics is then controlled by a single one-dimensional effective stochastic process which depends on three distinct strain-dependent kernels-self-consistently determined by the process itself-encoding the effective restoring force, friction and noise terms due to the particle interactions. From there one can compute dynamical observables such as particle mean-square displacements and shear stress fluctuations, and eventually aim at providing an exact d -> infinity benchmark for liquid and glass rheology. As an application of our results, we derive dynamically the 'statefollowing' equations that describe the static response of a glass to a finite shear strain until it yields.

2019

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Diffusion is the net movement of anything (for example, atoms, ions, molecules, energy) generally from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven b

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In mathematics, a random walk is a random process that describes a path that consists of a succession of random steps on some mathematical space. An elementary example of a random walk is the rando

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