We introduce a general theory for transport through -- thermally or actively -- fluctuating channels which  quantifies the impact of pore fluctuations on confined diffusion  in terms of the spectral statistics of the channel fluctuations. Our findings demonstrate a complex interplay between transport and surface wiggling: agitation enhances diffusion via the induced fluid flow, but spatial variations in pore geometry can induce a slowing-down via entropic trapping, in full agreement with molecular dynamics simulations and existing observations from the literature. 

David Dean is Professor in Statistical Physics at the University of Bordeaux, France. He studied for his undergraduate and PhD degrees at the University of Cambridge. He was a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France from 2007-2012 and was the President of the Scientific Programme Committee of the Institut Henri Poincaré (Paris) from 2011-15. He has published more than 130 articles, with 2400 citations and an h-index of 24. He is the co-editor, with J. Dobnikar, A. Naji and R. Podgornik of the book Electrostatics of Soft and Disordered Matter, Pan Standford Publishing (2014).