Paper detail

Diffusion in a biased washboard potential revisited

The celebrated Sutherland-Einstein relation for systems at thermal equilibrium states that spread of trajectories of Brownian particles is an increasing function of temperature. Here, we scrutinize diffusion of underdamped Brownian motion in a biased periodic potential and analyse regimes in which a diffusion coefficient decreases with increasing temperature within finite temperature window. Comprehensive numerical simulations of the corresponding Langevin equation performed with unprecedented resolution allow us to construct phase diagram for the occurrence of the non-monotonic temperature dependence of the diffusion coefficient. We discuss the relation of the latter effect with the phenomenon of giant diffusion.