Giant acceleration of free diffusion by use of tilted periodic potentials - art. no. 010602

The effective diffusion coefficient for the overdamped Brownian motion in a tilted periodic potential is calculated in closed analytical form. Univers ality classes and scaling properties for weak thermal noise are identified near the threshold tilt where deterministic running solutions set in. In th is regime the diffusion may be greatly enhanced, as compared to free therma l diffusion with, for a realistic experimental setup, an enhancement of up to 14 orders of magnitude.