Related papers: The efficiency of the molecular motors
Thermodynamics of nanoscale devices is an active area of research. Despite their noisy surrounding they often produce mechanical work (e.g. micro-heat engines), display rectified Brownian motion (e.g. molecular motors). This invokes…
When a Brownian particle in contact with a heat bath at a constant temperature is controlled by a time-dependent harmonic potential, its distribution function can be rigorously derived from the Kramers equation with the consideration of the…
Artificial micro heat engines are prototypical models to explore and elucidate the mechanisms of energy transduction in a regime that is dominated by fluctuations [1-2]. Micro heat engines realized hitherto mimicked their macroscopic…
Motor-driven cargo transport is a complex phenomenon where multiple motor proteins attached on to a cargo engage in pulling activity, often leading to tug-of-war, displaying bidirectional motion. However, most mathematical and computational…
The topic of microscopic heat engine has undergone intensive research in recent years. Microscopic heat engines can exploit thermal as well as active fluctuations to extract thermodynamic work. We investigate the properties of a microscopic…
A heat engine is a machine which uses the temperature difference between a hot and a cold reservoir to extract work. Here both reservoirs are quantum systems and a heat engine is described by a unitary transformation which decreases the…
We investigate the efficiency of power generation by thermo-chemical engines. For strong coupling between the particle and heat flows and in the presence of a left-right symmetry in the system, we demonstrate that the efficiency at maximum…
The efficiency of microscopic heat engines in a thermally heterogenous environment is considered. We show that, as a consequence of the recently discovered entropic anomaly, quasi-static engines, whose efficiency is maximal in a fluid at…
In systems possessing a spatial or dynamical symmetry breaking thermal Brownian motion combined with unbiased, non-equilibrium noise gives rise to a channelling of chance that can be used to exercise control over systems at the micro- and…
The constraint relation for efficiency and power is crucial to design optimal heat engines operating within finite time. We find a universal constraint between efficiency and output power for heat engines operating in the low-dissipation…
The study of stochastic thermodynamic machines is one of the main topics in nonequilibrium thermodynamics. In this study, within the framework of Fokker-Planck equation, and using the method of characteristics of partial differential…
Quantum cycles in established heat engines can be modeled with various quantum systems as working substances. For example, a heat engine can be modeled with an infinite potential well as the working substance to determine the efficiency and…
We study the model of a molecular switch comprised of a molecule with a soft vibrational degree of freedom coupled to metallic leads. In the presence of strong electron-ion interaction, different charge states of the molecule correspond to…
Movements of molecular motors on cytoskeletal filaments are described by directed walks on a line. Detachment from this line is allowed to occur with a small probability. Motion in the surrounding fluid is described by symmetric random…
Optimisation of heat engines at the micro-scale has applications in biological and artificial nano-technology, and stimulates theoretical research in non-equilibrium statistical physics. Here we consider non-interacting overdamped particles…
Collective operation of multiple engines to achieve a common objective is a vital step in the design of complex machines. Recent studies have reduced the length scales of engine design to micro and nanometers. While strategies to build…
We present an optimal analysis for a quantum mechanical engine working between two energy baths within the framework of relativistic quantum mechanics, adopting a first-order correction. This quantum mechanical engine, with the direct…
The muscle contraction, operation of ATP synthase, maintaining the shape of a cell are believed to be secured by motor proteins, which can be modelled using the Brownian ratchet mechanism. We consider the randomly flashing ratchet model of…
The investigation of optimal processes has a long history in the field of thermodynamics. It is well known that finite-time processes that minimize dissipation often exhibit discontinuities. We use a combination of numerical and analytical…
We provide a mathematical analysis of appearance of the concentrations (as Dirac masses) of the solution to a Fokker-Planck system with asymmetric potentials. This problem has been proposed as a model to describe motor proteins moving along…