RT Journal Article
SR 00
ID 10.1103/PhysRevE.86.060101
A1 Boyer, Denis
A1 Dean, David S.
A1 Mejia-Monasterio, Carlos
A1 Oshanin, Gleb
T1 Optimal fits of diffusion constants from single-time data points of Brownian trajectories
JF Physical Review E
YR 2012
FD 2012-12-20
VO 86
IS 6
SP 060101
OP 1
AB Experimental methods based on single particle tracking (SPT) are being increasingly employed in the physical and biological sciences, where nanoscale objects are visualized with high temporal and spatial resolution. SPT can probe interactions between a particle and its environment but the price to be paid is the absence of ensemble averaging and a consequent lack of statistics. Here we address the benchmark question of how to accurately extract the diffusion constant of one single Brownian trajectory. We analyze a class of estimators based on weighted functionals of the square displacement. For a certain choice of the weight function these functionals provide the true ensemble averaged diffusion coefficient, with a precision that increases with the trajectory resolution.
SN 1539-3755
LK http://oa.upm.es/15618/
UL http://pre.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v86/i6/e060101