State-dependent diffusion in a periodic potential for a nonequilibrium open system

The state dependent diffusion concerns with the Brownian motion of a particle in inhomogeneous media. Based on a system reservoir nonlinear coupling model, when the bath is modulated by an external Gaussian random noise with arbitrary decaying correlation time, we present a microscopic approach to state dependent diffusion and multiplicative noise for an open nonequilibrium system in terms of Langevin description and associated Fokker-Planck equation in position space in the overdamped limit. We examine the thermodynamic consistency and explore the possibility of observing a phase induced current as a consequence of state dependent diffusion and finite correlation time of external noise. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2008