Related papers: A statistical mechanical study of mechanical dual …
We describe quantitatively a RNA molecule under the influence of an external force exerted at its two ends as in a typical single-molecule experiment. Our calculation incorporates the interactions between nucleotides by using the…
A new first-principles statistical mechanics formulation is proposed to describe slow and dilated granular fluids, where prolonged intergranular contacts vitiate collision theory. The contacts, where all the important physics takes place,…
We characterize the fluctuation properties of a polymer chain under external tension and the fluctuation-induced forces between two ring molecules threaded around the chain. The problem is relevant in the context of fluctuation-induced…
Active motions of a biological membrane can be induced by non-thermal fluctuations that occur in the outer environment of the membrane. We discuss the dynamics of a membrane interacting hydrodynamically with an active wall that exerts…
Heterogeneity in biological molecules, resulting in molecule-to-molecule variations in their dynamics and function, is an emerging theme. To elucidate the consequences of heterogeneous behavior at the single molecule level, we propose an…
The braiding of the solar coronal magnetic field via photospheric motions - with subsequent relaxation and magnetic reconnection -- is one of the most widely debated ideas of solar physics. We readdress the theory in the light of…
We discuss the force-velocity relations obtained in a two-state crossbridge model for molecular motors. They can be calculated analytically in two limiting cases: for a large number and for one pair of motors. The effect of the…
This work introduces a methodology for the statistical mechanical analysis of polymeric chains under tension controlled by optical or magnetic tweezers at thermal equilibrium with an embedding fluid medium. The response of single bonds…
We show that the correlated stochastic fluctuation of the friction coefficient can give rise to long-range directional motion of a particle undergoing Brownian random walk in a constant periodic energy potential landscape. The occurrence of…
Brownian dynamics simulations are used to study the detachment of a particle from a substrate. Although the model is simple and generic, we attempt to map its energy, length and time scales onto a specific experimental system, namely a bead…
When two solids are squeezed together they will in general not make atomic contact everywhere within the nominal (or apparent) contact area. This fact has huge practical implications and must be considered in many technological…
The elastic properties of two-component bilayer membranes are studied using a coarse grain model for amphiphilic molecules. The two species of amphiphiles considered here differ only in their length. Molecular Dynamics simulations are…
The remarkable accuracy and versatility of single-molecule techniques make possible new measurements that are not feasible in bulk assays. Among these, the precise estimation of folding free energies using fluctuation theorems in…
Ribbons are a class of slender structures whose length, width, and thickness are widely separated from each other. This scale separation gives a ribbon unusual mechanical properties in athermal macroscopic settings, e.g. it can bend without…
Time-resolved single-molecule biophysical experiments yield data that contain a wealth of dynamic information, in addition to the equilibrium distributions derived from histograms of the time series. In typical force spectroscopic setups…
We consider the interaction between two rods embedded in a fluctuating surface. The modification of fluctuations by the rods leads to an attractive long-range interaction between them. We consider fluctuations governed by either surface…
We modify and extend the recently developed statistical mechanical model for predicting the thermodynamic properties of chain molecules having noncovalent double-stranded conformations, as in RNA or ssDNA, and $\beta-$sheets in protein, by…
We develop a statistical theory of the mean field. It is based on the proposition that the mean field can be obtained as an energy average. Moreover, it is assumed that the matrix elements of the residual interaction are random with the…
We study from a statistical physics perspective the dynamics of a bouncing ball maintained in a chaotic regime thanks to collisions with a plate experiencing an aperiodic vibration. We analyze in details the energy exchanges between the…
Based on classical statistical mechanics, we calculate analytically the length extension and the fluctuations, under a pulling force, of a polymer modelled as a freely jointed chain with extensible bonds, the latter considered as harmonic…