Hi:
Here is the title and abstract for Eli Barkai's talk on Wednesday, December
2nd.
MIT Room 56-154
Weak Ergodicity Breaking
Eli Barkai, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
In nature the noisy signal representing a Physical observable is in many
cases unpredictable, though the long time average of the signal converges in
statistical sense to the ensemble average (ergodicity). Recently,
observations of dynamics of single molecules, e.g. blinking quantum dots
[1], and motion of single mRNA in the cell revealed non-ergodic processes
[3]. These signals are characterizes by power law sojourn times, in micro
states of the system (e.g. in state on and off for the dots) in such a way
that the average time spent in a micro state diverges (scale free dynamics).
Two basic questions addressed in my talk are (i) what theory replaced
ergodic Boltzmann-Gibbs statistical mechanics for such systems [2] (ii) what
are possible Physical mechanisms responsible for anomalous non Gaussian
dynamics.
1. F. D. Stefani, J. P. Hoogenboom, and E. Barkai. Beyond Quantum Jumps:
Blinking Nano-scale Light Emitters. Physics Today 62(2), 34 (February 2009).
2. A. Rebenshtok, E. Barkai. Weakly non-Ergodic Statistical Physics. Journal
of Statistical Physics 133, 565 (2008).
3. Y. He, S. Burov, R. Metzler, E. Barkai. Random Time-Scale Invariant
Diffusion and Transport Coefficients. Physical Review Letters 101, 058101
(2008).
See viewpoint in Igor M. Sokolov, Physics 1, 8 (2008).
Thanks!
Eric
--
Roberto Olivares-Amaya
Aspuru-Guzik Group
Dept. of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Harvard University
http://aspuru.chem.harvard.edu