Diffusive transport by thermal velocity fluctuations.

Phys Rev Lett

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, New York, New York 10012, USA.

Published: May 2011

We study the contribution of advection by thermal velocity fluctuations to the effective diffusion coefficient in a mixture of two identical fluids. We find good agreement between a simple fluctuating hydrodynamics theory and particle and finite-volume simulations. The enhancement of the diffusive transport depends on the system size L and grows as ln(L/L₀) in quasi-two-dimensional systems, while in three dimensions it scales as L₀⁻¹ - L⁻¹, where L₀ is a reference length. Our results demonstrate that fluctuations play an important role in the hydrodynamics of small-scale systems.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.204501DOI Listing

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