Asymmetric kinks: Stabilization by entropic forces - art. no. 114102

Asymmetric kinks bridging two adjacent potential valleys of equal depth but different curvature are unstable against phonon modes. When coupled to a h eat bath, a kink-bearing string tends to cross over into the shallower vall ey; kinks are thus predicted to drift in the appropriate direction with vel ocity proportional to the temperature, in close agreement with numerical si mulation. When contrasted by a mechanical bias, these entropic forces give rise to a rich phenomenology that includes configurational phase transition s, double-kink dissociation. and noise-directed signal transmission.