English

On the existence of potential landscape in the evolution of complex systems

Quantitative Methods 2007-07-16 v1 Statistical Mechanics Information Theory Dynamical Systems math.IT Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems Molecular Networks

Abstract

A recently developed treatment of stochastic processes leads to the construction of a potential landscape for the dynamical evolution of complex systems. Since the existence of a potential function in generic settings has been frequently questioned in literature,herewe study several related theoretical issues that lie at core of the construction. We showthat the novel treatment,via a transformation,is closely related to the symplectic structure that is central in many branches of theoretical physics. Using this insight, we demonstrate an invariant under the transformation. We further explicitly demonstrate, in one-dimensional case, the contradistinction among the new treatment to those of Ito and Stratonovich, as well as others.Our results strongly suggest that the method from statistical physics can be useful in studying stochastic, complex systems in general.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.q-bio/0703044,
  title  = {On the existence of potential landscape in the evolution of complex systems},
  author = {P. Ao and C. Kwon and H. Qian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:q-bio/0703044},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

latex, 18 pages