Work, moments of work and heat flux are studied for the generic case of a strongly driven twolevel system immersed in a bosonic heat bath in domains of parameter space where perturbative treatments fail. This includes particularly the interplay between non-Markovian dynamics and moderate to strong external driving. Exact data are compared with predictions from weak coupling approaches. Further, the role of system-bath correlations in the initial thermal state and their impact on the heat flux are addressed. The relevance of these results for current experimental activities on solid state devices is discussed.

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We show the existence of a resonant behavior of the current of Brownian particles confined in a pulsating channel. The interplay between the periodic oscillations of the shape of the channel and a force applied along its axis leads to an increase of the particle current as a function of the noise level. A regime of current inversion is also observed for particular values of the oscillation frequency and the applied force. The model proposed to obtain these new behaviors of the current is based on the Fick-Jacobs equation in which the entropic barrier and the effective diffusion coefficient depend on time. The phenomenon observed could be used to optimize transport in microfluidic devices or biological channels.

We show that an extended system operating in the regime of stochastic resonance can act as a short-term memory device. The system under study is a ring of overdamped bistable oscillators coupled directionally, being each also subject to an external source of Gaussian white noise (the noise sources are independent). A single oscillator is driven by an external periodic force, assumed to act only over the time that the signal takes to traverse the whole ring. A traveling wave is then found to be transmitted several times along the ring with a small damping, provided that the driven oscillator operates in a regime close to stochastic resonance. If noise is suppressed from any oscillator of the chain, the traveling wave is immediately damped. The ring is thus found to act as a short-term memory device in which the stored information (one bit, corresponding to the presence or absence of the external driving) is sustained by noise during a characteristic time T(mem).

Following the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism we study the thermal transport in a composite chain subject to a time-dependent perturbation. The system is formed by two finite linear asymmetric harmonic chains subject to an on-site potential connected together by a time-modulated coupling. The ends of the chains are coupled to two phononic reservoirs at different temperatures. We present the relevant equations used to calculate the heat current along each segment. We find that the system presents different transport regimes according the driving frequency and temperature gradients. One of the regimes corresponds to a heat pump against thermal gradient, thus a characterization of the cooling performance of the device is presented. arXiv:1604.07714v1 [cond-mat.mes-hall]

To explain the increased transport of nutrients and metabolites and to control the movement of drug molecules through the transporters to the cancer cells, it is important to understand the exact mechanism of their structure and activity, as well as their biological and physical characteristics. We propose a computational model that reproduces the functionality of membrane transporters by quantifying the flow of substrates through the cell membrane. The model identifies the force induced by conformational changes of the transporter due to hydrolysis of ATP, in ABC transporters, or by an electrochemical gradient of ions, in secondary transporters. The transport rate is computed by averaging the velocity generated by the force along the paths followed by the substrates. The results obtained are in accordance with the experiments. The model provides an overall framework for analyzing the membrane transport proteins that regulate the flows of ions, nutrients and other molecules across the cell membranes, and their activities.

We report on the onset of anti-resonant behaviour of mass transport systems driven by timedependent forces. Anti-resonances arise from the coupling of a sufficiently high number of space-time modes of the force. The presence of forces having a wide space-time spectrum, a necessary condition for the formation of an anti-resonance, is typical of confined systems with uneven and deformable walls that induce entropic forces dependent on space and time. We have analyzed, in particular, the case of polymer chains confined in a flexible channel and shown how they can be sorted and trapped. The presence of resonance-antiresonance pairs found can be exploited to design protocols able to engineer optimal transport processes and to manipulate the dynamics of nano-objects.

In this paper we discuss the dynamics and transport properties of a massive particle, in a time dependent periodic potential of the ratchet type, with a dissipative environment. The directional currents and characteristics of the motion are studied as the specific frictional coefficient varies, finding that the stationary regime is strongly dependent on this parameter. The maximal Lyapunov exponent and the current show large fluctuations and inversions, therefore for some range of the control parameter, this inertial ratchet could originate a mass separation device. Also an exploration of the effect of a random force on the system is performed.Comment: PDF, 16 pages, 7 figure