Tracer particle diffusion in a system with hardcore interacting particles

Summary, in English

In this study, inspired by the work of Nakazato and Kitahara (1980 Prog. Theor. Phys. 64 2261), we consider the theoretical problem of tracer particle diffusion in an environment of diffusing hardcore interacting crowder particles. The tracer particle has a different diffusion constant from the crowder particles. Based on a transformation of the generating function, we provide an exact formal expansion for the tracer particle probability density, valid for any lattice in the thermodynamic limit. By applying this formal solution to dynamics on a regular Bravais lattice we provide a closed form approximation for the tracer particle diffusion constant which extends the Nakazato and Kitahara results to include also b.c.c. and f.c.c. lattices. Finally, we compare our analytical results to simulations in two and three dimensions.