Granular Büttiker-Landauer Motor

Random walkers usually diffuse according to Fick's law. On average, they move down the gradient of their concentration and, in the absence of external force, tend to distribute themselves uniformly. In some experiments, however, this familiar notion is at odds with observation. Sand grains, for instance, gather along the nodal lines of a vibrated elastic plate to form a Chladni figure, thus accumulating where fluctuations are weak-a fact that escapes the reach of Fick's law. On theoretical grounds, Büttiker [Transport as a consequence of state-dependent diffusion, Z. Phys. B Condens. Matter 68, 161 (1987)10.1007/BF01304221] and Landauer [Motion out of noisy states, J. Stat. Phys. 53, 233 (1988)JSTPBS0022-471510.1007/BF01011555] proposed that particles submitted to a nonuniform temperature field would indeed gather where the temperature is low. They also predicted that, in the presence of a potential force, a nonuniform temperature could drive a steady current of particles, powered only by noise. Here, we present an experimental realization of these phenomena in a macroscopic system, which confirms the quantitative predictions of Büttiker.