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Spontaneous Oscillations of Collective Molecular Motors

Frank Julicher, Jacques Prost

cond-mat.softarXiv:cond-mat/9611204

Abstract

We analyze a simple stochastic model to describe motor molecules which cooperate in large groups and present a physical mechanism which can lead to oscillatory motion if the motors are elastically coupled to their environment. Beyond a critical fuel concentration, the non-moving state of the system becomes unstable with respect to a mode with angular frequency omega. We present a perturbative description of the system near the instability and demonstrate that oscillation frequencies are determined by the typical timescales of the motors.

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