Brownian motion fractional diffusion equations

Chapter 8 by W. T. Coffey, Y. P. Kalmykov, and S. V. Titov, entitled Fractional Rotational Diffusion and Anomalous Dielectric Relaxation in Dipole Systems, provides an introduction to the theory of fractional rotational Brownian motion and microscopic models for dielectric relaxation in disordered systems. The authors indicate how anomalous relaxation has its origins in anomalous diffusion and that a physical explanation of anomalous diffusion may be given via the continuous time random walk model. It is demonstrated how this model may be used to justify the fractional diffusion equation. In particular, the Debye theory of dielectric relaxation of an assembly of polar molecules is reformulated using a fractional noninertial Fokker-Planck equation for the purpose of extending that theory to explain anomalous dielectric relaxation. Thus, the authors show how the Debye rotational diffusion model of dielectric relaxation of polar molecules (which may be described in microscopic fashion as the diffusion limit of a discrete time random walk on the surface of the unit sphere) may be extended via the continuous-time random walk to yield the empirical Cole-Cole, Cole-Davidson, and Havriliak-Negami equations of anomalous dielectric relaxation from a microscopic model based on a... 

The fact that the temporal occurrence of the motion events performed by the random walker is so broadly distributed that no characteristic waiting time exists has been exploited by a number of investigators [7,19,31] in order to generalize the various diffusion equations of Brownian dynamics to explain anomalous relaxation phenomena. The resulting diffusion equations are called fractional diffusion equations because in general they will involve fractional derivatives of the probability density with respect to the time. For example, in fractional noninertial diffusion in a potential, the diffusion Eq. (5) becomes [7,31]... 

The Peclet number compares the effect of imposed shear (known as the convective effect) with the effect of diffusion of the particles. The imposed shear has the effect of altering the local distribution of the particles, whereas the diffusion (or Brownian motion) of the particles tries to restore the equilibrium structure. In a quiescent colloidal dispersion the particles move continuously in a random manner due to Brownian motion. The thermal motion establishes an equilibrium statistical distribution that depends on the volume fraction and interparticle potentials. Using the Einstein-Smoluchowski relation for the time scale of the motion, with the Stokes-Einstein equation for the diffusion coefficient, one can write the time taken for a particle to diffuse a distance equal to its radius R, as... 

We shall now almost exclusively concentrate on the fractal time random walk excluding inertial effects and the discrete orientation model of dielectric relaxation. We shall demonstrate how in the diffusion limit this walk will yield a fractional generalization of the Debye-Frohlich model. Just as in the conventional Debye relaxation, a fractional generalization of the Debye-Frohlich model may be derived from a number of very different models of the relaxation process (compare the approach of Refs. 22, 23, 28 and 34—36). The advantage of using an approach based on a kinetic equation such as the fractional Fokker-Planck equation (FFPE) however is that such a method may easily be extended to include the effects of the inertia of the dipoles, external potentials, and so on. Moreover, the FFPE (by use of a theorem of operational calculus generalized to fractional exponents and continued fraction methods) clearly indicates how many existing results of the classical theory of the Brownian motion may be extended to include fractional dynamics. 

In the present section, it is demonstrated how the linear response of an assembly of noninteracting polar Brownian particles to a small external field F applied parallel and perpendicular to the bias field Fo may be calculated in the context of the fractional noninertial rotational diffusion in the same manner as normal rotational diffusion [8]. In order to carry out the calculation, it is assumed that the rotational Brownian motion of a particle may be described by a fractional noninertial Fokker-Planck (Smoluchowski) equation, in which the inertial effects are neglected. Both exact and approximate solutions of this equation are presented. We shall demonstrate that the characteristic times of the normal diffusion process, namely, the integral and effective relaxation times obtained in Refs. 8, 65, and 67, allow one to evaluate the dielectric response for anomalous diffusion. Moreover, these characteristic times yield a simple analytical equation for the complex dielectric susceptibility tensor describing the anomalous relaxation of the system. The exact solution of the problem reduces to the solution of the infinite hierarchies of differential-recurrence equations for the corresponding relaxation functions. The longitudinal and transverse components of the susceptibility tensor may be calculated exactly from the Laplace transform of these relaxation functions using linear response theory [72]. 

The anomalous diffusivity described by Eq. [13] is due entirely to the fractal nature of the diffusing particle s trajectory in free space. In fractal and multifractal porous media, the diffusing particle s trajectory is further constrained by the geometry of the pore space (Cushman, 1991 Giona et al., 1996 Lovejoy et al., 1998). As a result, when fractional Brownian motion occurs in a two-dimensional fractal porous medium, De becomes scale-dependent, as described by the following equation (Orbach, 1986 Crawford et al., 1993),... 

The main objective of this chapter is to establish the relation between the macroscopic equations like (3.1) and (3.5), the mesoscopic equations (3.2) and (3.3), etc., and the underlying microscopic movement of particles. We will show how to derive mesoscopic reaction-transport equations like (3.2) and (3.3) from microscopic random walk models. In particular, we will discuss the scaling procedures that lead to macroscopic reaction-transport equations. As an example, let us mention that the macroscopic reaction-diffusion equation (3.1) occurs as a result of the convergence of the random microscopic movement of particles to Brownian motion, while the macroscopic fractional equation (3.5) is closely related to the convergence of random walks with heavy-tailed jump PDFs to a-stable random processes or Levy flights. 

---