An effective description of a periodic one-dimensional hopping model

The periodic one-dimensional hopping model is useful for studying the motion of microscopic particles in the thermal noise environment. Based on the explicit formulations of mean velocity, mean first passage time and effective diffusion constant, a general N internal states or even infinite internal states model can be approximated by a one state model that retains the basic properties of the original process. This effective description aids the analysis of biochemical and biophysical problems. This effective description also implies that, to some extent, many processes can be well described by simple two-state models, or even one-state models.