Transport properties and efficiency of elastically coupled Brownian motors- art. no. 051908

As models for biological molecular motors, Brownian motors have been studie d recently by many workers, and their physical properties such as velocity, efficiency, and so on, have been investigated. They have also attracted mu ch interest in an application to nanoscale technology. It is significant to study more complex systems, that is, Coupled Brownian motors, in detail, s ince Brownian motors with a single particle have been mainly studied until now. In this paper, we consider Brownian motors coupled mutually with elast ic springs, and investigate the dynamics of the model and the efficiency of energy conversion. In particular, we find that the center of the mass of t he elastically coupled particles moves faster than the corresponding single -particle model, and also that the efficiency of the coupled-particle model is larger than that of the single-particle model.