Title:                  Efficiency of molecular machines with continuous phase space

Speaker:            Natalia Golubeva, Department of Physics and Astronomy,

                           Aarhus Universitet

Time:                 Thursday, 10^th 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