Synchronization of two bacterial flagella as a stochastic process

TL;DR

This paper models the stochastic synchronization of bacterial flagella, developing an approximation method to analyze phase differences and heat dissipation, with verification through numerical simulations, advancing understanding of biophysical energetics.

Contribution

It introduces a new approximation technique for analyzing stochastic phase synchronization and heat dissipation in bacterial flagella, addressing fluctuations at the single-sample level.

Findings

Analytical expressions for phase difference evolution

Quantitative analysis of heat dissipation fluctuations

Validation of the model with numerical simulations

Abstract

Synchronization with noise is important for understanding biophysical processes at nano- and micro-meter scales, such as neuronal firing and flagellar rotations. To understand the energetics of these processes, stochastic thermodynamics approaches are useful. Due to large fluctuations in a small system, ensemble averages of thermodynamic quantities are not sufficient to characterize the energetics of an individual sample. In this paper, we use a model for synchronization of bacterial flagella as an example, and develop an approximation method for analyzing the phase and heat dissipation in trajectories for different noise realizations. We describe the {temporal evolution} of the phase difference and heat dissipation as stochastic processes, and verify the analytical results by numerical simulations.