Polymer translocation under time-dependent driving forces: resonant activation induced by attractive polymer-pore interactions

TL;DR

This study investigates polymer translocation under time-dependent forces, revealing how attractive interactions induce resonant activation, leading to optimal translocation speeds at specific force frequencies.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of attractive polymer-pore interactions on translocation dynamics and identifies resonant activation phenomena under oscillating forces.

Findings

Attractive interactions create a free energy well, enabling resonant activation.

Translocation time exhibits a minimum at an optimal force frequency.

Force frequency influences translocation speed differently for attractive and repulsive pores.

Abstract

We study the driven translocation of polymers under time-dependent driving forces using $N$-particle Langevin dynamics simulations. We consider the force to be either sinusoidally oscillating in time or dichotomic noise with exponential correlation time, to mimic both plausible experimental setups and naturally occurring biological conditions. In addition, we consider both the case of purely repulsive polymer-pore interactions and the case with additional attractive polymer-pore interactions, typically occurring inside biological pores. We find that the nature of the interaction fundamentally affects the translocation dynamics. For the non-attractive pore, the translocation time crosses over to a fast translocation regime as the frequency of the driving force decreases. In the attractive pore case, because of a free energy well induced inside the pore, the translocation time can be a minimum at the optimal frequency of the force, the so-called resonant activation. In the latter case, we examine the effect of various physical parameters on the resonant activation, and explain our observations using simple theoretical arguments.