Neither a purely deterministic rotary nanomotor nor a purely orientational diffuser exhibits long-term translational motion, but coupling rotation to orientational diffusion yields translational diffusion. We demonstrate that this effective translational diffusion can easily dominate the ordinary thermal translational diffusion for experimentally relevant nanomotors, and that this effective diffusion is chiral. Unpowered chiral particles do not exhibit chiral diffusion, but a nanorotor has both handedness and an instantaneous direction of powered motion, thus—unlike an unpowered particle—its diffusional motion can distinguish left from right.

• Received 26 June 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.87.050301