The Measurement of Information and Free Energy in Mechanical-Force-Driven Coil–Globule Transitions
Résumé
We study the role of information (the relative entropy) for polymers undergoing coil-globule transitions driven by time-dependent force. Pulling experiments at various speeds are carried out by Brownian Dynamics (BD) simulations. We obtain the work distributions for the forward and time-reversed backward processes and informations stored at the end of the non-equilibrium pulling processes. We present the systematic method to measure the information from the pulling experiments and extract the infor- mation by analyzing slowly relaxing modes. When the information is incorporated, the work distributions modified by the information allow to access the proper free energy via the formulation of the generalized fluctuation theorems even if the initial states of the forward and time-reversed backward processes are out of equilibrium. This demon- strates that the work-information conversion works well for a single molecule system with many degrees of freedom.