title: Effective dissipation: Breaking time-reversal symmetry in driven microscopic energy transmission.
abstract: At molecular scales, fluctuations play a significant role and prevent biomolecular processes from always proceeding in a preferred direction, raising the question of how limited amounts of free energy can be dissipated to obtain directed progress. We examine the system and process characteristics that efficiently break time-reversal symmetry at fixed energy loss; in particular for a simple model of a molecular machine, an intermediate energy barrier produces unusually high asymmetry for a given dissipation. We relate the symmetry-breaking factors found in this model to recent observations of biomolecular machines.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A1S6 Canada.
authors.forename: Aidan I
authors.initials: AI
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A1S6 Canada.
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Sivak