Description:

Chemical systems can deviate from equilibrium for a variety of reasons: because they are kinetically trapped, because they are subject to a time-varying drive, or because they are simultaneously in contact with multiple incommensurate reservoirs. This last scenario, which generates a nonequilibrium steady state (NESS), yields a stationary distribution over microstates that is not Boltzmann and that sustains currents. I will discuss three parallel efforts to better understand the chemical dynamics of such steady states. First, I will introduce a thermodynamic uncertainty relationship constraining the magnitude of fluctuations in currents. Next, I will discuss my group’s efforts to elucidate structure-function relationships in model molecular motors by simulating the NESS with a mixture of Langevin dynamics and Grand Canonical Monte Carlo chemostats. Finally, I will show how tensor network methods, popular for quantum dynamics of spin chains, can be repurposed to compute rates for nonequilibrium reaction-diffusion processes.

Todd Gingrich, Assistant Professor, Northwestern University

Host: Adilson Motter