Accounting for the energies and entropies of kinesin’s catalytic cycle

When the processive motor protein kinesin walks along the biopolymer microtubule it can occasionally make a backward step. Recent single molecule experiments on moving kinesin have revealed that the forward-to-backward step ratio decreases exponentially with the load force. Carter and Cross (Nature 435, 308-312, 2005) found that this ratio tightly followed 802 × exp[−0.95F], where F is the load force in piconewtons. A straightforward analysis of a Brownian step leads to L/(2k _B T) as the factor in front of the load force, where L is the 8 nm stepsize, k _B is the Boltzmann constant, and T is the temperature. The factor L/(2k _B T) does indeed equal 0.95 pN⁻¹. The same analysis shows how the 802 prefactor derives from the power stroke energy G as exp[G/(2k _B T)]. There are indications that the power stroke derives from the entropically driven coiling of the 30 amino acid neck linker that connects the two kinesin heads. This idea is examined and consequences are deduced.     

Suppression of Chaos and Phase Locking in Two Coupled Nonidentical Neurons under Periodic Input

Dynamical behaviour of two coupled neurons with at least one of them being chaotic is presented. Bifurcation diagrams and Lyapunov exponents are calculated to diagnose the dynamical behaviour of the coupled neurons with the increasing coupling strength. It is found that when the coupling strength increases, a chaotic neuron can be controlled by the coupling between neurons. At the same time, phase locking is studied by the maxima of the differences of instantaneous phases and average frequencies between two coupled neurons, and the inherent connection of phase locking and the suppression of chaos is formulated. It is observed that the onset of phase locking is closely related to the suppression of chaos. Finally, a way for suppression of chaos in two coupled nonidentical neurons under periodic input is suggested.     

Heterojunction light emitting diodes fabricated with different n-layer oxide structures on p-GaN layers by magnetron sputtering

We grew heterojunction light emitting diode (LED) structures with various n-type semiconducting layers by magnetron sputtering on p-type GaN at high temperature. Because the undoped ZnO used as an active layer was grown under oxygen rich atmosphere, all LED devices showed the EL characteristics corresponding to orange-red wavelength due to high density of oxygen interstitial, which was coincident with the deep level photoluminescence emission of undoped ZnO. The use of the Ga doped layers as a top layer provided the sufficient electron carriers to active region and resulted in the intense EL emission. The LED sample with small quantity of Mg incorporated in MgZnO as an n-type top layer showed more intense emission than the LED with ZnO, in spite of the deteriorated electrical and structural properties of the MgZnO film. This might be due to the improvement of output extraction efficiency induced by rough surface.     

Spontaneous decay of an excited atom placed near a rectangular plate

Using the Born expansion of the Green tensor, we consider the spontaneous decay rate of an excited atom placed in the vicinity of a rectangular plate. We discuss the limitations of the commonly used simplifying assumption that the plate extends to infinity in the lateral directions and examine the effects of the atomic dipole moment orientation, atomic position, and plate boundary and thickness on the atomic decay rate. In particular, it is shown that due to the plate finite size, the spontaneous decay may be inhibited even when the atom is situated very close to the surface, and that in the boundary region, the spontaneous decay rate can be strongly modified.     

Hadron spectroscopy and structure from AdS/CFT

The AdS/CFT correspondence between conformal field theory and string states in an extended space-time has provided new insights into not only hadron spectra, but also their light-front wave functions. We show that there is an exact correspondence between the fifth-dimensional coordinate of anti-de Sitter space z and a specific impact variable ζ which measures the separation of the constituents within the hadron in ordinary space-time. This connection allows one to predict the form of the light-front wave functions of mesons and baryons, the fundamental entities which encode hadron properties and scattering amplitudes. A new relativistic Schr?dinger light-front equation is found which reproduces the results obtained using the fifth-dimensional theory. Since they are complete and orthonormal, the AdS/CFT model wave functions can be used as an initial ansatz for a variational treatment or as a basis for the diagonalization of the light-front QCD Hamiltonian. A number of applications of light-front wave functions are also discussed.     

Momentum transfer from vacuum field to anisotropic electromagnetic media

It is demonstrated that many novel vacuum effects will be caused if an anisotropic electromagnetic environment, which can break the universal symmetry of vacuum, is achieved. It is thus possible for the momentum to be transferred from the vacuum zero-point field to the anisotropic electromagnetic media. In addition to the effect considered by Feigel more recently [A. Feigel, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92 (2004) 020404], there may exist another vacuum-fluctuation contribution to the momentum of a medium. Such an effect has a relativistic origin (resulting from the relativistic transformation of the optical constants), which, however, was not taken into account by Feigel.     

Eigenvalues of collective emission in multi-slice slab configurations

We compute the eigenmodes of collective emission from multi-slice slab configurations, using the transfer matrix formalism. We elucidate within this formalism the phenomena of “Invisible Gaps” in multiple-slice configuration and of “Precocious Superradiance” in periodic structures previously observed in numerical solutions of Maxwell-Bloch equations.     

Effects of including the counterrotating term and virtual photons on the eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of a scalar photon collective emission theory

We find eigenmodes of an integral equation describing N 2-level atoms interacting with a scalar field, one atom being initially excited. Neglect of virtual field quanta would replace the correct kernel by its real part. This has serious consequences both for small and large samples.     

Quark-hadron duality in electron-pion scattering

We explore the relationship between exclusive and inclusive electromagnetic scattering from the pion, focusing on the transition region at intermediate Q². Combining Drell-Yan data on the leading twist quark distribution in the pion with a model for the resonance region at large x, we calculate QCD moments of the pion structure function over a range of Q², and quantify the role of higher twist corrections. Using a parameterization of the pion elastic form factor and phenomenological models for the π↦ρ transition form factor, we further test the extent to which local duality may be valid for the pion. Received: 10 February 2003 / Accepted: 12 March 2003 / Published online: 27 May 2003