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Updated: May 11, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Ratchet effect driven by Coulomb friction: the asymmetric Rayleigh piston
A Sarracino1, A Gnoli, A Puglisi
1CNR-ISC and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università Sapienza, Piazzale A. Moro 2, 00185 Roma, Italy.
Abstract:
The effect of Coulomb friction is studied in the framework of collisional ratchets. It turns out that the average drift of these devices can be expressed as the combination of a term related to the lack of equipartition between the probe and the surrounding bath, and a term featuring the average frictional force. We illustrate this general result in the asymmetric Rayleigh piston, showing how Coulomb friction can induce a ratchet effect in a Brownian particle in contact with an equilibrium bath. An explicit analytical expression for the average velocity of the piston is obtained in the rare collision limit. Numerical simulations support the analytical findings.
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