Controls that expedite first-passage times in disordered systems

Marc Höll, Alon Nissan, Brian Berkowitz, Eli Barkai

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

First-passage time statistics in disordered systems exhibiting scale invariance are studied widely. In particular, long trapping times in energy or entropic traps are fat-tailed distributed, which slow the overall transport process. We study the statistical properties of the first-passage time of biased processes in different models, and we employ the big-jump principle that shows the dominance of the maximum trapping time on the first-passage time. We demonstrate that the removal of this maximum significantly expedites transport. As the disorder increases, the system enters a phase where the removal shows a dramatic effect. Our results show how we may speed up transport in strongly disordered systems exploiting scale invariance. In contrast to the disordered systems studied here, the removal principle has essentially no effect in homogeneous systems; this indicates that improving the conductance of a poorly conducting system is, theoretically, relatively easy as compared to a homogeneous system.

Original languageEnglish
Article number034124
Number of pages18
JournalPhysical Review E
Volume108
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Sep 2023

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Condensed Matter Physics
  • Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
  • Statistics and Probability

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