Nonlocal-in-time dynamics and crossover of diffusive regimes

Abstract

We study a simple nonlocal-in-time dynamic system proposed for the effective modeling of complex diffusive regimes in heterogeneous media. We present its solutions and their commonly studied statistics such as the mean square distance. This interesting model employs a nonlocal operator to replace the conventional first-order time-derivative. It introduces a finite memory effect of a constant length encoded through a kernel function. The nonlocal-in-time operator is related to fractional time derivatives that rely on the entire time-history on one hand, while reduces to, on the other hand, the classical time derivative if the length of the memory window diminishes. This allows us to demonstrate the effectiveness of the nonlocal-in-time model in capturing the crossover widely observed in nature between the initial subdiffusion and the long time normal diffusion.