Forcing inertial Brownian motors: Efficiency and negative differential mobility

The noise-assisted, directed transport in a one-dimensional dissipative, inertial Brownian motor of the rocking type that is exposed to an external bias is investigated. We demonstrate that the velocity–load characteristics is distinctly non-monotonic, possessing regimes with a negative differential mobility. In addition, we evaluate several possible efficiency quantifiers which are compared among each other. These quantifiers characterize the mutual interplay between the viscous drag and the external load differently, weighing the inherent rectification features from different physical perspectives.