Energy Storage in a Hamiltonian System in Partial Contact with a Heat Bath
Statistical Mechanics
2009-10-31 v1 q-bio
Abstract
To understand the mechanism allowing for the long-term storage of excess energy in proteins, we study a Hamiltonian system consisting of several coupled pendula in partial contact with a heat bath. It is found that energy storage is possible when the motion of each pendulum switches between oscillatory (vibrational) and rotational (phase-slip) modes. The storage time increases almost exponentially to the square root of the injected energy. The relevance of our mechanism to protein motors is discussed.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0004010,
title = {Energy Storage in a Hamiltonian System in Partial Contact with a Heat Bath},
author = {Naoko Nakagawa and Kunihiko Kaneko},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0004010},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
8 pages, 4 figures, to appear in J.Phys.Soc.Jpn