Thermokinetic approach of single particles and clusters involving anomalous diffusion under viscoelastic response

Abstract

We present a thermokinetic description of anomalous diffusion of single particles and clusters in a viscoelastic medium in terms of a non-Markovian diffusion equation involving memory functions. The scaling behavior of these functions is analyzed by considering hydrodynamics and cluster-size space random walk arguments. We explain experimental results on diffusion of Brownian particles in the cytoskeleton, in cluster-cluster aggregation, and in a suspension of micelles.