Three dimensional diffusion with helical persistence

Abstract

We formulate the the problem of persistent diffusion in three dimensions from the perspective of the Frenet--Serret equations. In contrast to one and two dimensional systems, in three dimensions persistent diffusion is, in general, a third order process. In this paper we derive a Fokker--Planck equation for the process and we calculate its effective diffusion constant. We also provide expressions for the asymptotic average displacement of the walk, as well as explicit expressions for the Fourier--Laplace transform of the correlations between the tangent, normal and binormal vectors of the motion.