Physics (Internal)

Small-numbers dynamics in biology and nanotech: the Maximum Caliber approach to nonequilibrium statistical mechanics

This event is part of the Physics Department Colloquia Series.

Abstract: The laws of dynamics — Fick’s law of diffusion, Fourier’s law of heat flow, and the mass-action models of biochemistry, for example — are applicable in bulk solutions where the numbers of particles are macroscopically large. But, inside biological cells, or in applications in nanotechnology, the numbers of particles of a given type is often less than a few hundred. We are interested in the dynamical fluctuations that occur in such cases. To explore small-numbers dynamics, we have explored small-numbers diffusion by microfluidics and single-particle two-state chemistry using laser-trap experiments. We find that the dynamical distributions are well predicted by a trajectory-based approach that ET Jaynes called “Maximum Caliber”.