Artificial sieves for quasimassless particles

Brownian motion on a symmetric vibrated periodic substrate is shown to be extremely sensitive to the particle mass even in the regime of large damping. This phenomenon is the most apparent for high vibration frequencies, a condition of technological interest, which is investigated here both analytically and numerically. When plotted versus the damping constant, both the particle mobility and the diffusion coefficient develop sharp (correlated) peaks, thus suggesting efficient schemes for separating submicron particles according to their mass or geometry.