Physics (Internal)

Stochastic Resonance

This event is part of the Biophysics/Condensed Matter Seminar Series.

Abstract
Conventional wisdom teaches us that the transmission and detection of signals is hindered by noise. However, during the last two decades, the paradigm of stochastic resonance (SR) proved this assertion wrong: indeed, addition of the appropriate amount of noise can boost a signal and hence facilitate its detection in a noisy environment. Due to its simplicity and robustness, SR can work on almost every scale, thus attracting interdisciplinary interest from physicists, geologists, engineers, biologists and medical doctors, who nowadays use it as an instrument for their specific purposes.
At the present time, there exist a lot of diversified models of SR. Moreover, different characterizations of SR have been proposed in order to make such a mechanism more accessible to experimenters. This presentation relies mostly on the two-state model of SR, which is general enough to exhibit the main features of SR. Finally, we also discuss some situations that go beyond the generic SR scenario but are still characterized by a constructive role of noise.