Volume exclusion and elasticity-driven directional transport: a model inspired by bacterium motility

Abstract

We present a model to capture the role of strong attractive interaction and volume exclusion inducing super-diffusive transport of small systems in a thermal atmosphere. We characterize such systems on the basis of three dynamic regimes at three different time scales: at very small and large scales the system is diffusive and at the intermediate scales it is super-diffusive. Our model is derived on the basis of some general knowledge about bacterium motility and identifies volume exclusion as a fundamental contributor to the origin of driven directional transport.