Entropy and Its Quantum Thermodynamical Implication for Anomalous Spectral Systems

The state function entropy and its quantum thermodynamical implication for two typical dissipative systems with anomalous spectral densities are studied by investigating on their low-temperature quantum behavior. In all cases it is found that the entropy decays quickly and vanishes as the temperature approaches zero. This reveals a good conformity with the third law of thermodynamics and provides another evidence for the validity of fundamental thermodynamical laws in the quantum dissipative region.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Stochastic equation for a jumping process with long-time correlations

A jumping process, defined in terms of jump size distribution and waiting time distribution, is presented. The jumping rate depends on the process value. The process, which is Markovian and stationary, relaxes to an equilibrium and is characterized by the power-law autocorrelation function. Therefore, it can serve as a model of the 1/f noise as well as a model of the stochastic force in the generalized Langevin equation. This equation is solved for the noise correlations 1/t; the resulting velocity distribution has sharply falling tails. The system preserves the memory about the initial condition for a very long time.Comment: 7 pages, 5 Postscript figure

Specific heat anomalies of open quantum systems

The evaluation of the specific heat of an open, damped quantum system is a subtle issue. One possible route is based on the thermodynamic partition function which is the ratio of the partition functions of system plus bath and of the bath alone. For the free damped particle it has been shown, however, that the ensuing specific heat may become negative for appropriately chosen environments. Being an open system this quantity then naturally must be interpreted as the change of the specific heat obtained as the difference between the specific heat of the heat bath coupled to the system degrees of freedom and the specific heat of the bath alone. While this difference may become negative, the involved specific heats themselves are always positive; thus, the known thermodynamic stability criteria are perfectly guaranteed. For a damped quantum harmonic oscillator, instead of negative values, under appropriate conditions one can observe a dip in the difference of specific heats as a function of temperature. Stylized minimal models containing a single oscillator heat bath are employed to elucidate the occurrence of the anomalous temperature dependence of the corresponding specific heat values. Moreover, we comment on the consequences for the interpretation of the density of states based on the thermal partitionfunction.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, new title and some modifications of the main tex

Relativistic Brownian motion: From a microscopic binary collision model to the Langevin equation

The Langevin equation (LE) for the one-dimensional relativistic Brownian motion is derived from a microscopic collision model. The model assumes that a heavy point-like Brownian particle interacts with the lighter heat bath particles via elastic hard-core collisions. First, the commonly known, non-relativistic LE is deduced from this model, by taking into account the non-relativistic conservation laws for momentum and kinetic energy. Subsequently, this procedure is generalized to the relativistic case. There, it is found that the relativistic stochastic force is still \gd-correlated (white noise) but does \emph{no} longer correspond to a Gaussian white noise process. Explicit results for the friction and momentum-space diffusion coefficients are presented and discussed.Comment: v2: Eqs. (17c) and (28) corrected; v3: discussion extended, Eqs. (33) added, thereby connection to earlier work clarified; v4: final version, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Anomalous diffusion for overdamped particles driven by cross-correlated white noise sources

We study the statistical properties of overdamped particles driven by two cross-correlated multiplicative Gaussian white noises in a time-dependent environment. Using the Langevin and Fokker-Planck approaches, we derive the exact probability distribution function for the particle positions, calculate its moments and find their corresponding long-time, asymptotic behaviors. The generally anomalous diffusive regimes of the particles are classified, and their dependence on the friction coefficient and the characteristics of the noises is analyzed in detail. The asymptotic predictions are confirmed by exact solutions for two examples.Comment: 15 page

Capacitance fluctuations causing channel noise reduction in stochastic Hodgkin-Huxley systems

Voltage-dependent ion channels determine the electric properties of axonal cell membranes. They not only allow the passage of ions through the cell membrane but also contribute to an additional charging of the cell membrane resulting in the so-called capacitance loading. The switching of the channel gates between an open and a closed configuration is intrinsically related to the movement of gating charge within the cell membrane. At the beginning of an action potential the transient gating current is opposite to the direction of the current of sodium ions through the membrane. Therefore, the excitability is expected to become reduced due to the influence of a gating current. Our stochastic Hodgkin-Huxley like modeling takes into account both the channel noise -- i.e. the fluctuations of the number of open ion channels -- and the capacitance fluctuations that result from the dynamics of the gating charge. We investigate the spiking dynamics of membrane patches of variable size and analyze the statistics of the spontaneous spiking. As a main result, we find that the gating currents yield a drastic reduction of the spontaneous spiking rate for sufficiently large ion channel clusters. Consequently, this demonstrates a prominent mechanism for channel noise reduction.Comment: 18 page

Ratcheting Heat Flux against a Thermal Bias

Merely rocking the temperature in one heat bath can direct a steady heat flux from cold to hot against a non-zero thermal bias in stylized nonlinear lattice junctions that are sandwiched between two heat baths. Likewise, for an average zero-temperature difference between the two contacts a net, ratchet-like heat flux emerges. Computer simulations show that this very heat flux can be controlled and reversed by suitably tailoring the frequency ($\lesssim$ 100 MHz) of the alternating temperature field.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Microcanonical quantum fluctuation theorems

Previously derived expressions for the characteristic function of work performed on a quantum system by a classical external force are generalized to arbitrary initial states of the considered system and to Hamiltonians with degenerate spectra. In the particular case of microcanonical initial states explicit expressions for the characteristic function and the corresponding probability density of work are formulated. Their classical limit as well as their relations to the respective canonical expressions are discussed. A fluctuation theorem is derived that expresses the ratio of probabilities of work for a process and its time reversal to the ratio of densities of states of the microcanonical equilibrium systems with corresponding initial and final Hamiltonians.From this Crooks-type fluctuation theorem a relation between entropies of different systems can be derived which does not involve the time reversed process. This entropy-from-work theorem provides an experimentally accessible way to measure entropies.Comment: revised and extended versio

Effect of channel block on the spiking activity of excitable membranes in a stochastic Hodgkin-Huxley model

The influence of intrinsic channel noise on the spontaneous spiking activity of poisoned excitable membrane patches is studied by use of a stochastic generalization of the Hodgkin-Huxley model. Internal noise stemming from the stochastic dynamics of individual ion channels is known to affect the collective properties of the whole ion channel cluster. For example, there exists an optimal size of the membrane patch for which the internal noise alone causes a regular spontaneous generation of action potentials. In addition to varying the size of ion channel clusters, living organisms may adapt the densities of ion channels in order to optimally regulate the spontaneous spiking activity. The influence of channel block on the excitability of a membrane patch of certain size is twofold: First, a variation of ion channel densities primarily yields a change of the conductance level. Second, a down-regulation of working ion channels always increases the channel noise. While the former effect dominates in the case of sodium channel block resulting in a reduced spiking activity, the latter enhances the generation of spontaneous action potentials in the case of a tailored potassium channel blocking. Moreover, by blocking some portion of either potassium or sodium ion channels, it is possible to either increase or to decrease the regularity of the spike train.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, published 200