Non-Gaussian Brownian Diffusion in Dynamically Disordered Thermal Environments

In this article, we suggest simple alternatives to the methods recently used by Jain and Sebastian [ J. Phys. Chem. B 2016, 120, 3988 ] and Chechkin et al. [ Phys. Rev. X 2017, 7, 021002 ] to treat a model of non-Gaussian Brownian diffusion based on the dynamics of a particle governed by Ornstein–Uhlenbeck modulated white noise. In addition to substantiating these authors’ earlier findings (which show that a particle can execute a simple random walk even when the distribution of its displacements deviates from Gaussianity), our approach identifies another process, two-state white noise, that exhibits the same “anomalous” Brownian behavior. Indeed, we find that the modulation of white noise by any stochastic process whose time correlation function decays exponentially is likely to behave similarly, suggesting that the occurrence of such behavior can be widespread and commonplace.