Residence times of a Brownian particle with temporal heterogeneity
File(s)resR1.pdf (679 KB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Bressloff, Paul C
Lawley, Sean D
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We consider a diffusing particle that randomly switches conformational state. Motivated by various scenarios in cell biology, we suppose that (a) the diffusion coefficient depends on the conformational state and/or (b) the particle can only pass through a series of gates in the domain when it is in a particular conformational state. We develop probabilistic methods to analyze this case of diffusion with temporal heterogeneity, and use these methods to calculate the expected residence time in portions of the domain before absorption at a boundary. We find several new phenomena not seen in recent studies of diffusion with spatial heterogeneity, some of which are counterintuitive. In particular, the expected residence times can be non-monotonic functions of (i) the initial distance from the absorbing boundary and (ii) the diffusion coefficients. We focus on one-dimensional intervals, but show how the analysis can be extended to spherically symmetric d-dimensional domains.
Date Issued
2017-05-12
Date Acceptance
2017-03-24
Citation
Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, 2017, 50 (19)
ISSN
1751-8113
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical
Volume
50
Issue
19
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd. This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article published in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at 10.1088/1751-8121/aa692a
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1751-8121/aa692a
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
195001
Date Publish Online
2017-04-06