Efficiency of molecular machines with continuous phase space

We consider a molecular machine described as a Brownian particle diffusing in a tilted periodic potential. We evaluate the absorbed and released power of the machine as a function of the applied molecular and chemical forces, by using the fact that the times for completing a cycle in the forward and the backward 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. We explicitly evaluate the efficiency at maximum power for a simple sawtooth potential. We also obtain the efficiency at maximum power for a broad class of 2-D models of a Brownian machine and find that loosely coupled machines operate with a smaller efficiency at maximum power than their strongly coupled counterparts.Comment: To appear in EP

Efficiency at maximum power of interacting molecular machines

We investigate the efficiency of systems of molecular motors operating at maximum power. We consider two models of kinesin motors on a microtubule: for both the simplified and the detailed model, we find that the many-body exclusion effect enhances the efficiency at maximum power of the many-motor system, with respect to the single motor case. Remarkably, we find that this effect occurs in a limited region of the system parameters, compatible with the biologically relevant range.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Probing the interactions of charmed mesons with nuclei in pˉ\bar p induced reactions

We study the perspectives of resonant and nonresonant charmed meson production in $\bar{p} + A$ reactions within the Multiple Scattering Monte Carlo (MSMC) approach. We calculate the production of the resonances $\Psi(3770), \Psi(4040)$ and $\Psi(4160)$ on various nuclei, their propagation and decay to $D, \bar{D}, D^*, \bar{D}^*, D_s, \bar{D}_s$ in the medium and vacuum, respectively. The modifications of the open charm vector mesons in the nuclear medium are found to be rather moderate or even small such that dilepton spectroscopy will require an invariant mass resolution of a few MeV. Furthermore, the elastic and inelastic interactions of the open charm mesons in the medium are taken into account, which can be related to $(u,d)$-, $s$- or $c$-quark exchange with nucleons. It is found that by studying the $D/\bar{D}$ ratio for low momenta in the laboratory ($\leq 2-2.2$ GeV/c) as a function of target mass $A$ stringent constraints on the $c$-quark exchange cross section can be obtained. On the other hand, the ratios $D^-_s/D^+_s$ as well as $D/D^-_s$ and $D/D^+_s$ at low momenta as a function of $A$ will permit to fix independently the strength of the $s$-quark exchange reaction in $D^-_s N$ scattering.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX, including 9 postscript figures, submitted to Eur. Phys. J.

Medium effects in the production and decay of vector mesons in pion-nucleus reactions

The $\omega$-, $\rho$- and $\phi$-resonance production and their dileptonic decay in $\pi^- A$ reactions at 1.1 - 1.7 GeV/c are calculated within the intranuclear cascade (INC) approach. The invariant mass distribution of the dilepton pair for each resonance can be decomposed in two components which correspond to their decay 'inside' the target nucleus and in the vacuum, respectively. The first components are strongly distorted by the nuclear medium due to resonance-nucleon scattering and a possible mass shift at finite baryon density. These medium modifications are compared to background sources in the dilepton spectrum from $\pi N$ bremsstrahlung as well as the Dalitz decays of $\omega$ and $\eta$ mesons produced in the reaction. Detailed predictions for $\pi^- Pb$ reactions at 1.3 and 1.7 GeV/c are made within several momentum bins for the lepton pair.Comment: 29 pages, LaTeX, including 12 postscript figures, UGI-97-07, Nucl. Phys. A., in pres