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We consider a system of $N$ neurons, each spiking randomly with rate depending on its membrane potential. When a neuron spikes, its potential is reset to $0$ and all other neurons receive an additional amount $h/N$ of potential, where $ h >…
We consider Gibbs measures on the configuration space $S^{\mathbb{Z}^d}$, where mostly $d\geq 2$ and $S$ is a finite set. We start by a short review on concentration inequalities for Gibbs measures. In the Dobrushin uniqueness regime, we…
Biomolecular condensates form on timescales of seconds in cells upon environmental or compositional changes. Condensate formation is thus argued to act as a mechanism for sensing such changes and quickly initiating downstream processes,…
Autologous chemotaxis, in which cells secrete and detect molecules to determine the direction of fluid flow, is thwarted at high cell density because molecules from other cells interfere with a given cell's signal. Using a minimal model of…
Due to quantum noise fluctuations, the rate of error achievable in decision problems involving several possible configurations of a scattering system is subject to a fundamental limit known as the Helstrom bound. Here, we present a general…
Sensory adaptation enables organisms to adjust their perception in a changing environment. A paradigm is bacterial chemotaxis, where the output activity of chemoreceptors is adapted to different baseline concentrations via receptor…
Metasurface with bound states in the continuum (BICs) offer exceptional potential for optical sensing due to their inherently high quality (Q) factors. However, the detection of symmetry-protected BICs remains experimentally challenging due…
Living cells sense their environment through the binding of extra-cellular molecular ligands to cell surface receptors. Puzzlingly, vast numbers of signaling pathways exhibit a high degree of cross talk between different signals whereby…
We derive and discuss general physical bounds on the electromagnetic scattering and absorption of passive structures. Our theory, based on passivity and power conservation, quantifies the minimum and maximum allowed scattering for an object…
Fluctuation-enhanced sensing comprises the analysis of the stochastic component of the sensor signal and the utilization of the microscopic dynamics of the interaction between the agent and the sensor. We study the relationship between the…
This paper constructs dynamical models and estimation algorithms for the concentration of target molecules in a fluid flow using an array of novel biosensors. Each biosensor is constructed out of protein molecules embedded in a synthetic…
Sensory systems use limited resources to mediate the perception of a great variety of objects and events. Here a normative framework is presented for exploring how the problem of efficient allocation of resources can be solved in visual…
Optical molecular sensing techniques are often limited by the refractive index change associated with the probed interactions. In this work, we present a closed form analytical model to estimate the magnitude of optical refractive index…
Cells rely on the ability to sense and respond to small spatial differences in chemoattractant concentrations for survival. There is growing evidence that this is accomplished by setting the signaling system near the threshold for…
Single receptor-ligand bonds have finite lifetimes, so that biological systems can dynamically react to changes in their environment. In cell adhesion, adhesion bonds usually act cooperatively in adhesion clusters. Outside the cellular…
Cells sense and predict their environment via energy-dissipating pathways. However, it is unclear whether dissipation helps or harms prediction. Here we study dissipation and prediction for a minimal sensory module of receptors that…
Conventional classical sensors are approaching their maximum sensitivity levels in many areas. Yet these levels still are far from the ultimate limits dictated by quantum mechanics. Quantum sensors promise a substantial step ahead by taking…
Conformational fluctuations are believed to play an important role in the process by which transcription factor proteins locate and bind their target site on the genome of a bacterium. Using a simple model, we show that the binding time can…
The mammalian brain is a metabolically expensive device, and evolutionary pressures have presumably driven it to make productive use of its resources. For sensory areas, this concept has been expressed more formally as an optimality…
Second moment beam widths are commonly used in paraxial optics to define the focal extent of beams. However, second moments of arbitrary beams are not guaranteed to be finite. I propose the focal concentration area as a measure of beam…