78 research outputs found
Rat Race Dynamics and Crazy Companies: The Diffusion of Technologies and Social Behavior
How and why do technologies spread when and where they do? What are the implications and consequences for the structure, wealth, and management of human organizations? These expansive questions were the subject of the presentations and discussions of the International Conference on Diffusion of Technologies and Social Behavior, summarized in this chapter. The chapter is organized under the following headings: empirical regularities; theoretical issues; predictability; roles of time and space; definition of niche and innovation; selection dynamics; role of marketing; social aspects of diffusion; globalization of diffusion processes; and applications of diffusion. While the chapter treats some questions for policy in both the public and private sectors, it emphasizes research needs and opportunities in the diffusion field
Geometry-controlled kinetics
It has long been appreciated that transport properties can control reaction
kinetics. This effect can be characterized by the time it takes a diffusing
molecule to reach a target -- the first-passage time (FPT). Although essential
to quantify the kinetics of reactions on all time scales, determining the FPT
distribution was deemed so far intractable. Here, we calculate analytically
this FPT distribution and show that transport processes as various as regular
diffusion, anomalous diffusion, diffusion in disordered media and in fractals
fall into the same universality classes. Beyond this theoretical aspect, this
result changes the views on standard reaction kinetics. More precisely, we
argue that geometry can become a key parameter so far ignored in this context,
and introduce the concept of "geometry-controlled kinetics". These findings
could help understand the crucial role of spatial organization of genes in
transcription kinetics, and more generally the impact of geometry on
diffusion-limited reactions.Comment: Submitted versio
Is the Equivalence Principle violated by Generalized Uncertainty Principles and Holography in a brane-world?
It has been recently debated whether a class of generalized uncertainty
principles that include gravitational sources of error are compatible with the
holographic principle in models with extra spatial dimensions. We had in fact
shown elsewhere that the holographic scaling is lost when more than four
space-time dimensions are present. However, we shall show here that the
validity of the holographic counting can be maintained also in models with
extra spatial dimensions, but at the intriguing price that the equivalence
principle for a point-like source be violated and the inertial mass differ from
the gravitational mass in a specific non-trivial way.Comment: 5 pages, latex fil
A Brownian particle in a microscopic periodic potential
We study a model for a massive test particle in a microscopic periodic
potential and interacting with a reservoir of light particles. In the regime
considered, the fluctuations in the test particle's momentum resulting from
collisions typically outweigh the shifts in momentum generated by the periodic
force, and so the force is effectively a perturbative contribution. The
mathematical starting point is an idealized reduced dynamics for the test
particle given by a linear Boltzmann equation. In the limit that the mass ratio
of a single reservoir particle to the test particle tends to zero, we show that
there is convergence to the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process under the standard
normalizations for the test particle variables. Our analysis is primarily
directed towards bounding the perturbative effect of the periodic potential on
the particle's momentum.Comment: 60 pages. We reorganized the article and made a few simplifications
of the conten
A field-theoretic approach to the Wiener Sausage
The Wiener Sausage, the volume traced out by a sphere attached to a Brownian
particle, is a classical problem in statistics and mathematical physics.
Initially motivated by a range of field-theoretic, technical questions, we
present a single loop renormalised perturbation theory of a stochastic process
closely related to the Wiener Sausage, which, however, proves to be exact for
the exponents and some amplitudes. The field-theoretic approach is particularly
elegant and very enjoyable to see at work on such a classic problem. While we
recover a number of known, classical results, the field-theoretic techniques
deployed provide a particularly versatile framework, which allows easy
calculation with different boundary conditions even of higher momenta and more
complicated correlation functions. At the same time, we provide a highly
instructive, non-trivial example for some of the technical particularities of
the field-theoretic description of stochastic processes, such as excluded
volume, lack of translational invariance and immobile particles. The aim of the
present work is not to improve upon the well-established results for the Wiener
Sausage, but to provide a field-theoretic approach to it, in order to gain a
better understanding of the field-theoretic obstacles to overcome.Comment: 45 pages, 3 Figures, Springer styl
Modeling the scaling properties of human mobility
While the fat tailed jump size and the waiting time distributions
characterizing individual human trajectories strongly suggest the relevance of
the continuous time random walk (CTRW) models of human mobility, no one
seriously believes that human traces are truly random. Given the importance of
human mobility, from epidemic modeling to traffic prediction and urban
planning, we need quantitative models that can account for the statistical
characteristics of individual human trajectories. Here we use empirical data on
human mobility, captured by mobile phone traces, to show that the predictions
of the CTRW models are in systematic conflict with the empirical results. We
introduce two principles that govern human trajectories, allowing us to build a
statistically self-consistent microscopic model for individual human mobility.
The model not only accounts for the empirically observed scaling laws but also
allows us to analytically predict most of the pertinent scaling exponents
Random Walks on Stochastic Temporal Networks
In the study of dynamical processes on networks, there has been intense focus
on network structure -- i.e., the arrangement of edges and their associated
weights -- but the effects of the temporal patterns of edges remains poorly
understood. In this chapter, we develop a mathematical framework for random
walks on temporal networks using an approach that provides a compromise between
abstract but unrealistic models and data-driven but non-mathematical
approaches. To do this, we introduce a stochastic model for temporal networks
in which we summarize the temporal and structural organization of a system
using a matrix of waiting-time distributions. We show that random walks on
stochastic temporal networks can be described exactly by an
integro-differential master equation and derive an analytical expression for
its asymptotic steady state. We also discuss how our work might be useful to
help build centrality measures for temporal networks.Comment: Chapter in Temporal Networks (Petter Holme and Jari Saramaki
editors). Springer. Berlin, Heidelberg 2013. The book chapter contains minor
corrections and modifications. This chapter is based on arXiv:1112.3324,
which contains additional calculations and numerical simulation
First-passage times in complex scale-invariant media
How long does it take a random walker to reach a given target point? This
quantity, known as a first passage time (FPT), has led to a growing number of
theoretical investigations over the last decade1. The importance of FPTs
originates from the crucial role played by first encounter properties in
various real situations, including transport in disordered media, neuron firing
dynamics, spreading of diseases or target search processes. Most methods to
determine the FPT properties in confining domains have been limited to
effective 1D geometries, or for space dimensions larger than one only to
homogeneous media1. Here we propose a general theory which allows one to
accurately evaluate the mean FPT (MFPT) in complex media. Remarkably, this
analytical approach provides a universal scaling dependence of the MFPT on both
the volume of the confining domain and the source-target distance. This
analysis is applicable to a broad range of stochastic processes characterized
by length scale invariant properties. Our theoretical predictions are confirmed
by numerical simulations for several emblematic models of disordered media,
fractals, anomalous diffusion and scale free networks.Comment: Submitted version. Supplementary Informations available on Nature
websit
Quantum dynamics in strong fluctuating fields
A large number of multifaceted quantum transport processes in molecular
systems and physical nanosystems can be treated in terms of quantum relaxation
processes which couple to one or several fluctuating environments. A thermal
equilibrium environment can conveniently be modelled by a thermal bath of
harmonic oscillators. An archetype situation provides a two-state dissipative
quantum dynamics, commonly known under the label of a spin-boson dynamics. An
interesting and nontrivial physical situation emerges, however, when the
quantum dynamics evolves far away from thermal equilibrium. This occurs, for
example, when a charge transferring medium possesses nonequilibrium degrees of
freedom, or when a strong time-dependent control field is applied externally.
Accordingly, certain parameters of underlying quantum subsystem acquire
stochastic character. Herein, we review the general theoretical framework which
is based on the method of projector operators, yielding the quantum master
equations for systems that are exposed to strong external fields. This allows
one to investigate on a common basis the influence of nonequilibrium
fluctuations and periodic electrical fields on quantum transport processes.
Most importantly, such strong fluctuating fields induce a whole variety of
nonlinear and nonequilibrium phenomena. A characteristic feature of such
dynamics is the absence of thermal (quantum) detailed balance.Comment: review article, Advances in Physics (2005), in pres
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