14 research outputs found
The DNA electronic specific heat at low temperature: The role of aperiodicity
AbstractThe electronic specific heat spectra at constant volume (CV) of a long-range correlated extended ladder model, mimicking a DNA molecule, is theoretically analyzed for a stacked array of a double-stranded structure made up from the nucleotides guanine G, adenine A, cytosine C and thymine T. The role of the aperiodicity on CV is discussed, considering two different nucleotide arrangements with increasing disorder, namely the Fibonacci and the Rudin–Shapiro quasiperiodic structures. Comparisons are made for different values of the band fillings, considering also a finite segment of natural DNA, as part of the human chromosome Ch22
Activated Random Walkers: Facts, Conjectures and Challenges
We study a particle system with hopping (random walk) dynamics on the integer
lattice . The particles can exist in two states, active or
inactive (sleeping); only the former can hop. The dynamics conserves the number
of particles; there is no limit on the number of particles at a given site.
Isolated active particles fall asleep at rate , and then remain
asleep until joined by another particle at the same site. The state in which
all particles are inactive is absorbing. Whether activity continues at long
times depends on the relation between the particle density and the
sleeping rate . We discuss the general case, and then, for the
one-dimensional totally asymmetric case, study the phase transition between an
active phase (for sufficiently large particle densities and/or small )
and an absorbing one. We also present arguments regarding the asymptotic mean
hopping velocity in the active phase, the rate of fixation in the absorbing
phase, and survival of the infinite system at criticality. Using mean-field
theory and Monte Carlo simulation, we locate the phase boundary. The phase
transition appears to be continuous in both the symmetric and asymmetric
versions of the process, but the critical behavior is very different. The
former case is characterized by simple integer or rational values for critical
exponents (, for example), and the phase diagram is in accord with
the prediction of mean-field theory. We present evidence that the symmetric
version belongs to the universality class of conserved stochastic sandpiles,
also known as conserved directed percolation. Simulations also reveal an
interesting transient phenomenon of damped oscillations in the activity
density
Black hole thermodynamical entropy
As early as 1902, Gibbs pointed out that systems whose partition function
diverges, e.g. gravitation, lie outside the validity of the Boltzmann-Gibbs
(BG) theory. Consistently, since the pioneering Bekenstein-Hawking results,
physically meaningful evidence (e.g., the holographic principle) has
accumulated that the BG entropy of a black hole is
proportional to its area ( being a characteristic linear length), and
not to its volume . Similarly it exists the \emph{area law}, so named
because, for a wide class of strongly quantum-entangled -dimensional
systems, is proportional to if , and to if
, instead of being proportional to (). These results
violate the extensivity of the thermodynamical entropy of a -dimensional
system. This thermodynamical inconsistency disappears if we realize that the
thermodynamical entropy of such nonstandard systems is \emph{not} to be
identified with the BG {\it additive} entropy but with appropriately
generalized {\it nonadditive} entropies. Indeed, the celebrated usefulness of
the BG entropy is founded on hypothesis such as relatively weak probabilistic
correlations (and their connections to ergodicity, which by no means can be
assumed as a general rule of nature). Here we introduce a generalized entropy
which, for the Schwarzschild black hole and the area law, can solve the
thermodynamic puzzle.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in EPJ