Tracer diffusion in a dislocated lamellar system

Abstract

Many lamellar systems exhibit strongly anisotropic diffusion. When the diffusion across the lamellae is slow, an alternative mechanism for transverse transport becomes important. A tracer particle can propagate in the direction normal to the lamellae, never leaving a particular layer, by going around a screw dislocation. Given the density of positive and negative screw dislocations, we calculate the statistical properties of the transverse transport. When either positive or negative dislocations are in excess, the tracer moves ballistically normally to the layers with the mean square of the displacement growing like the square of time T^2. When the average dislocation charge is zero, the mean square of the normal displacement grows like T log T for large times. To obtain this result, the trajectory of the tracer must be smoothed over distances of order of the dislocation core size.