Frenetic steering: nonequilibrium-enabled navigation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method called frenetic steering that enables navigation of slow degrees of freedom by coupling them to driven components, manipulating their reactivities to produce desired dynamics such as limit cycles and strange attractors.

Contribution

It presents a new strategy for controlling slow dynamics through nonequilibrium coupling and demonstrates its effectiveness with examples like the van der Pol oscillator and Lorenz attractors.

Findings

Frenetic steering can induce nonlinear limit cycles.

It can generate strange attractors in driven systems.

The approach suggests biological applications for controlling functions.

Abstract

We explain the steering of slow degrees of freedom by coupling them to driven components for which the time-symmetric reactivities are manipulated. We present the strategy and main principle that make that sort of navigation feasible. For illustration, nonlinear limit cycles (as in the van der Pol oscillator) and strange attractors (as in the Lorenz dynamics) are seen to emerge when the driving in the nonequilibrium medium is kept fixed while the frenesy is tuned to produce the required forces. We imagine that such frenetic steering is available in Life as well, allowing selection of the appropriate biological functioning.