Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of molecular-scale energy conversion

Date: Wednesday, December 13

Time: 13:00-14：00

Location: Lab 4, level E, L4E26 > Changed to Lab 4, level F, L4F01

Speaker: Prof. Michael Jack, Department of Physics, University of Otago, New Zealand

Title :  Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of molecular-scale energy conversion

Abstract:

At the molecular scale motion is often governed by overdamped Brownian motion on a free-energy  potential landscape. In this talk we survey the use of this framework to describe the non-equilibrium energy conversion behavior of artificial and biological molecular scale devices (often called molecular or protein motors). Combining the Brownian framework with Shannon entropy, it is possible to develop a thermodynamically-consistent description of energy conversion between chemical and mechanical degrees of freedom as occurs in biological motor proteins. We show how this description relates to the so called “thermodynamic uncertainty relation” and discuss the generalization of this framework to treating many interacting molecular motors.