This work focuses on the dynamics of particles in a confined geometry with position-dependent diffusivity, where the confinement is modelled by a periodic channel consisting of unit cells connected by narrow passage ways. We consider three functional forms for the diffusivity, corresponding to the scenarios of a constant (D 0 ), as well as a low (D m ) and a high (D d ) mobility diffusion in cell centre of the longitudinally symmetric cells. Due to the interaction among the diffusivity, channel shape and external force, the system exhibits complex and interesting phenomena. By calculating the probability density function, mean velocity and mean first exit time with the Itô calculus form, we find that in the absence of external forces the diffusivity D d will redistribute particles near the channel wall, while the diffusivity D m will trap them near the cell centre. The superposition of external forces will break their static distributions. Besides, our results demonstrate that for the diffusivity D d , a high dependence on the x coordinate (parallel with the central channel line) will improve the mean velocity of the particles. In contrast, for the diffusivity D m , a weak dependence on the x coordinate will dramatically accelerate the moving speed. In addition, it shows that a large external force can weaken the influences of different diffusivities; inversely, for a small external force, the types of diffusivity affect significantly the particle dynamics. In practice, one can apply these results to achieve a prominent enhancement of the particle transport in two-or three-dimensional channels by modulating the local tracer diffusivity via an engineered gel of varying porosity or by adding a cold tube to cool down the diffusivity along the central line, which may be a relevant effect in engineering applications. Effects of different stochastic calculi in the evaluation of the underlying multiplicative stochastic equation for different physical scenarios are discussed.New J. Phys. 22 (2020) 053016 Y Li et al confined spaces, transport of particles in nanopores, zeolites and gel networks [8-10], or protein diffusion in the mammalian cell cytoplasm [11]. In many cases, such structured environments can be viewed as confined channels with different boundaries and properties [12][13][14]. The behaviours of systems in these confined channels have been studied by virtue of the analytical Fick-Jacobs (FJ) equation and numerical simulations of the dynamic equations [15][16][17][18][19][20]. Results for symmetric periodic channels indicate that the mean transport velocity may be proportional to large external forces in the confined environment [19][20][21][22]. For asymmetric channels, it was found that the shape of the confinement contributes to the moving direction and mean displacement [20,23], which can be applied to fine separation of mixtures and also the design of many devices [24,25]. Time-dependent and deformable boundaries were discussed to explore the activity in living cells [26,27]. In addition, the interaction...

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Many biological systems possess confined structures, which produce novel influences on the dynamics. Here, stochastic resonance (SR) in a triple cavity that consists of three units and is subjected to noise, periodic force and vertical constance force is studied, by calculating the spectral amplification η numerically. Meanwhile, SR in the given triple cavity and differences from other structures are explored. First, it is found that the cavity parameters can eliminate or regulate the maximum of η and the noise intensity that induces this maximum. Second, compared to a double cavity with similar maximum/minimum widths and distances between two maximum widths as the triple cavity, η in the triple one shows a larger maximum. Next, the conversion of the natural boundary in the pure potential to the reflection boundary in the triple cavity will create the necessity of a vertical force to induce SR and lead to a decrease in the maximum of η . In addition, η monotonically decreases with the increase of the vertical force and frequency of the periodic force, while it presents several trends when increasing the periodic force’s amplitude for different noise intensities. Finally, our studies are extended to the impact of fractional Gaussian noise excitations. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vibrational and stochastic resonance in driven nonlinear systems (part 2)’.

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