Biased Brownian motion in extremely corrugated tubes

Biased Brownian motion of point-size particles in a three-dimensional tube with varying cross-section is investigated. In the fashion of our recent work, Martens et al. [Phys. Rev. E 83, 051135 (2011)] we employ an asymptotic analysis to the stationary probability density in a geometric parameter of the tube geometry. We demonstrate that the leading order term is equivalent to the Fick-Jacobs approximation. Expression for the higher order corrections to the probability density is derived. Using this expansion orders, we obtain that in the diffusion dominated regime the average particle current equals the zeroth order Fick-Jacobs result corrected by a factor including the corrugation of the tube geometry. In particular, we demonstrate that this estimate is more accurate for extremely corrugated geometries compared with the common applied method using a spatially-dependent diffusion coefficient D(x, f) which substitutes the constant diffusion coefficient in the common Fick-Jacobs equation. The analytic findings are corroborated with the finite element calculation of a sinusoidal-shaped tube. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.