Skip to main content
Article
Diffusive Transport Enhanced by Thermal Velocity Fluctuations
Physical Review Letters (2011)
  • Alejandro Garcia, San Jose State University
  • Aleksandar Donev, New York University
  • Anton de la Fuente, San Jose State University
  • John B Bell, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Abstract
We study the contribution of advection by thermal velocity fluctuations to the effective diffusion coefficient in a mixture of two identical fluids. We find good agreement between a simple fluctuating hydrodynamics theory and particle and finite-volume simulations. The enhancement of the diffusive transport depends on the system size L and grows as ln⁡(L/L0) in quasi-two-dimensional systems, while in three dimensions it scales as L0-1-L-1, where L0 is a reference length. Our results demonstrate that fluctuations play an important role in the hydrodynamics of small-scale systems.
Keywords
  • transport,
  • fluctuations
Publication Date
2011
Citation Information
Alejandro Garcia, Aleksandar Donev, Anton de la Fuente and John B Bell. "Diffusive Transport Enhanced by Thermal Velocity Fluctuations" Physical Review Letters Vol. 106 (2011)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/alejandro_garcia1/6/