Title: Efficiency of molecular machines with continuous phase space Speaker: Natalia Golubeva, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus Universitet Time: Thursday, 10th November, 2011, at 14:00 Place: Room 1520-731 Abstract: We consider a molecular machine described as a Brownian particle diffusing in a tilted periodic potential. We use the fact that the times for completing a cycle in the forward and the ackward direction have the same distribution, and that the ratio of the corresponding splitting probabilities can be simply expressed as a function of the applied force, to evaluate the efficiency of the machine as a function of the output power. We explicitly evaluate the efficiency at maximum power for a simple sawtooth potential. We also obtain the efficiency at maximum power for a special class of 2-D models of a Brownian machine and find that loosely coupled machines operate at a lower efficiency at maximum power than their strongly coupled counterparts. _____ Alberto Imparato