Related papers: Conversion of heat to work: An efficient inchworm
We investigate a symmetry broken dimer constrained to move in a particular direction when in contact with a heat-bath at a constant temperature. The dimer is not driven by any external force. The system gains kinetic energy from the…
We investigate the model of "reversible ratchet" with interacting particles, introduced by us earlier [Europhys. Lett. 84, 50009 (2008)]. We further clarify the effect of efficiency enhancement due to interaction and show that it is of…
We investigate emergence of spontaneous filtering of Brownian motion in higher dimensional space by many--body structures of symmetry broken dimer. Interacting dimer form structures which eventually restrict rotational degrees of freedom of…
Thermal ratchets can extract useful work from random fluctuations. This is common in the molecular scale, such as motor proteins, and has also been used to achieve directional transport in microfluidic devices. In this work, we use the…
Molecular motors in biological systems are expected to use ambient fluctuation. In a recent Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 80}, 5251 (1998)], it was showed that the following question was unsolved, ``Can thermal noise facilitate energy…
Molecular motors are known to have the high efficiency of energy transformation in the presence of thermal fluctuation. Motivated by the surprising fact, recent studies of thermal ratchet models are showing how and when work should be…
Fluctuation-dissipation relation ensures thermodynamic equilibrium of a particle immersed in a heat bath. We will show that, under certain circumstances, the fluctuation-dissipation relation fails to ensure equilibrium between the immersed…
We consider mechanisms of directed transport in a ratchet model comprising, besides the external freedom where transport occurs, a chemical freedom that replaces the familiar external driving by an autonomous dynamics providing energy…
An inchworm processive mechanism is proposed to explain the motion of dimeric molecular motors such as kinesin. We present here preliminary results for this mechanism focusing on observables like mean velocity, coupling ratio and efficiency…
Micromotors pushed by biological entities, like motile bacteria, constitute a fascinating way to convert chemical energy into mechanical work at the micrometer scale. Here we show, by using numerical simulations, that a properly designed…
We show that a mesoscopic system such as Feynman's ratchet may operate as a heat pump, and clarify a underlying physical picture. We consider a system of a particle moving along an asymmetric periodic structure . When put into a contact…
We present a self-contained engine, which is made of one or more two-level systems, each of which is coupled to a single bath, as well as to a common load composed of a particle on a tilted lattice. We show that the energy and the entropy…
Merely rocking the temperature in one heat bath can direct a steady heat flux from cold to hot against a non-zero thermal bias in stylized nonlinear lattice junctions that are sandwiched between two heat baths. Likewise, for an average…
Studies of noise-induced motions are showing that coherent energy can be extracted from some kinds of noise in a periodic ratchet. Recently, energetics of Langevin dynamics is formulated by Sekimoto [J.Phys.Soc.Jpn, 66 1234 (1997)], which…
Information-driven engines that rectify thermal fluctuations are a modern realization of the Maxwell-demon thought experiment. We introduce a simple design based on a heavy colloidal particle, held by an optical trap and immersed in water.…
Polymers with active segments constitute prospective future materials and are used as a model for some biological systems such as chromatin. The directions of the active forces are typically introduced with temporal or spatial correlations…
Directed transport in ratchets is determined by symmetry-breaking in a system out of equilibrium. A hallmark of rocking ratchets is current reversals: an increase in the rocking force changes the direction of the current. In this work for a…
We consider the transport of rigid objects with internal structure in a flashing ratchet potential by investigating the overdamped behavior of a rod-like chain of evenly spaced point particles. In 1D, analytical arguments show that the…
We investigate directed thermal heat flux across 1D homogenous nonlinear lattices when no net thermal bias is present on average. A nonlinear lattice of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-type or Lennard-Jones-type system is connected at both ends to thermal…
We present a new class of thermal ratchets operating under the action of a symmetry breaking non-Hermitian perturbation which rectifies thermal fluctuations, and driven by a unbiased periodic force. The peculiar non-Hermitian dynamics which…