Ergodic properties of occupation times in heterogeneous media

Abstract

We investigate the ergodic properties of Brownian motion in heterogeneous media through the statistics of occupation times. Using the Feynman-Kac formalism, we derive analytical expressions for the distributions, moments, and ergodicity breaking parameters of occupation times in two models with spatially varying diffusion coefficient: a piecewise-constant profile and a power-law profile. In the piecewise model, the half occupation time and the occupation time within an interval follow asymmetric arcsine and half-Gaussian distributions, respectively, indicating non-ergodic behavior. For the power-law case, the corresponding distributions are the Lamperti and Mittag-Leffler. In both models, we identify a transition from non-ergodic to ergodic dynamics as the exponent vary. Numerical simulations fully corroborate the analytical results, demonstrating the effectiveness of the Feynman-Kac approach for quantifying ergodicity in heterogeneous diffusion processes.