Effective diffusivity of Brownian particles in a two dimensional square lattice of hard disks

Abstract

We revisit the classic problem of the effective diffusion constant of a Brownian particle in a square lattice of reflecting impenetrable hard disks. This diffusion constant is also related to the effective conductivity of non-conducting and infinitely conductive disks in the same geometry. We show how a recently derived Green's function for the periodic lattice can be exploited to derive a series expansion of the diffusion constant in terms of the disk's volume fraction $\varphi$. Secondly we propose a variant of the Fick-Jacobs approximation to study the large volume fraction limit. This combination of analytical results is shown to describe the behavior of the diffusion constant for all volume fractions.