Ultraviolet Superradiance from Mega-Networks of Tryptophan in Biological Architectures.

Networks of tryptophan (Trp)─an aromatic amino acid with strong fluorescence response─are ubiquitous in biological systems, forming diverse architectures in transmembrane proteins, cytoskeletal filaments, subneuronal elements, photoreceptor complexes, virion capsids, and other cellular structures. We analyze the cooperative effects induced by ultraviolet (UV) excitation of several biologically relevant Trp mega-networks, thus giving insights into novel mechanisms for cellular signaling and control. Our theoretical analysis in the single-excitation manifold predicts the formation of strongly superradiant states due to collective interactions among organized arrangements of up to >105 Trp UV-excited transition dipoles in microtubule architectures, which leads to an enhancement of the fluorescence quantum yield (QY) that is confirmed by our experiments. We demonstrate the observed consequences of this superradiant behavior in the fluorescence QY for hierarchically organized tubulin structures, which increases in different geometric regimes at thermal equilibrium before saturation, highlighting the effect's persistence in the presence of disorder. Our work thus showcases the many orders of magnitude across which the brightest (hundreds of femtoseconds) and darkest (tens of seconds) states can coexist in these Trp lattices.

Focusing in multiwell potentials: applications to ion channels.

We investigate nonequilibrium stationary distributions induced by stochastic dichotomous noise in double-well and multiwell models of ion channel gating kinetics. The channel kinetics is analyzed using both overdamped Langevin equations and master equations. With the Langevin equation approach we show a nontrivial focusing effect due to the external stochastic noise, namely, the concentration of the probability distribution in one of the two wells of a double-well system or in one or more of the wells of the multiwell model. In the multiwell system, focusing in the outer wells is shown to be achievable under physiological conditions, while focusing in the central wells has proved possible so far only at very low temperatures. We also discuss the strength of the focusing effect and obtain the conditions necessary for maximal focusing to appear. These conditions cannot be predicted by a simple master equation approach.

Enhancement of the magnetic anisotropy barrier in critical long range spin systems.

Magnetic materials are usually characterized by anisotropy energy barriers which dictate the timescale of the magnetization decay and consequently the magnetic stability of the sample. Here we consider magnetization decay for spin systems in a d = 3 cubic lattice with an isotropic Heisenberg interaction decaying as a power law with a critical exponent α = d and on-site anisotropy. We show that the anisotropy energy barrier can be determined from the ergodicity breaking energy of the corresponding isolated system and that, unlike in the case of nearest neighbour interaction, the anisotropy energy barrier grows as the particle volume, V, and not as the cross-sectional area.

From closed to open one-dimensional Anderson model: transport versus spectral statistics.

Using the phenomenological expression for the level spacing distribution with only one parameter 0 ≤ ß ≤ ∞ covering all regimes of chaos and complexity in a quantum system, we show that transport properties of the one-dimensional Anderson model of finite size can be expressed in terms of this parameter. Specifically, we demonstrate a strictly linear relation between ß and the normalized localization length for the whole transition from strongly localized to extended states. This result allows one to describe all transport properties in the open system entirely in terms of the parameter ß and the strength of the coupling to the continuum. For nonperfect coupling, our data show a quite unusual interplay between the degree of internal chaos defined by ß and the degree of openness of the model. The results can be experimentally tested in single-mode waveguides with either bulk or surface disorder.

Distribution of resonance widths and dynamics of continuum coupling.

We analyze the statistics of resonance widths in a many-body Fermi system with open decay channels. Depending on the strength of continuum coupling, such a system reveals growing deviations from the standard chi-square (Porter-Thomas) width distribution. The deviations emerge from the process of increasing interaction of intrinsic states through common decay channels; in the limit of perfect coupling this process leads to the superradiance phase transition. The width distribution depends also on the intrinsic dynamics (chaotic versus regular). The results presented here are important for understanding the recent experimental data concerning the width distribution for neutron resonances in nuclei.

Magnetic reversal time in open long-range systems.

Topological phase space disconnection has been recently found to be a general phenomenon in many-body spin system with anisotropic interaction. We show that the power law divergence of magnetic reversal time at the energy signaling such disconnection is generic for long-range interacting systems with an exponent proportional to the number of particles. We also study the modifications induced putting the system in contact with a thermal bath. Using the canonical formalism we analyze the magnetic reversal times at any temperature. Moreover, due to the divergence of reversal time at the energy disconnection threshold we can recover, using saddle point approximation, a simple exponential dependence on the inverse temperature showing the explicit relevance of the energy disconnection threshold for finite many-body interacting systems at finite temperature. This sets a general framework to understand the emergence of ferromagnetism in finite magnetic systems starting from microscopic models without phenomenological on-site barriers.

Open system of interacting fermions: statistical properties of cross sections and fluctuations.

Statistical properties of cross sections are studied for an open system of interacting fermions. The description is based on the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian that accounts for the existence of open decay channels preserving the unitarity of the scattering matrix. The intrinsic interaction is modeled by the two-body random ensemble of variable strength. In particular, the crossover region from isolated to overlapping resonances accompanied by the effect of the width redistribution creating superradiant and trapped states is studied in detail. The important observables, such as average cross section, its fluctuations, autocorrelation functions of the cross section, and scattering matrix, are very sensitive to the coupling of the intrinsic states to the continuum around the crossover. A detailed comparison is made of our results with standard predictions of statistical theory of cross sections, such as the Hauser-Feshbach formula for the average cross section and Ericson theory of fluctuations and correlations of cross sections. Strong deviations are found in the crossover region, along with the dependence on intrinsic interactions and the degree of chaos inside the system.

Topological nonconnectivity threshold in long-range spin systems.

We demonstrate the existence of a topological disconnection threshold, recently found by Borgonovi [J. Stat. Phys. 116, 1435 (2004)], for generic 1-d anisotropic Heisenberg models interacting with an interparticle potential R(-alpha) when 0

Time scale for magnetic reversal and the topological nonconnectivity threshold.

Anisotropic classical Heisenberg models with all-to-all spin coupling display a topological nonconnectivity threshold (TNT) for any number N of spins. Below this threshold, the energy surface is disconnected in two components with positive and negative total magnetizations, respectively, so that magnetization cannot reverse its sign and ergodicity is broken, even at finite N. Here, we solve the model in the microcanonical ensemble, using a recently developed method based on large deviation techniques, and show that a phase transition is present at an energy higher than the TNT energy. In the energy range between the TNT energy and the phase transition, magnetization changes sign stochastically and its behavior can be fully characterized by an average magnetization reversal time. The time scale for magnetic reversal can be computed analytically, using statistical mechanics. Numerical simulations confirm this calculation and further show that the magnetic reversal time diverges with a power law at the TNT threshold, with a size-dependent exponent. This exponent can be computed in the thermodynamic limit N-->(infinity), by the knowledge of entropy as a function of magnetization, and turns out to be in reasonable agreement with finite numerical simulations. We finally generalize our results to other models: Heisenberg chains with distance-dependent coupling, small 3D clusters with nearest-neighbor interactions, metastable states. We conjecture that the power-law divergence of the magnetic reversal time scale might be a universal signature of the presence of a TNT.