Speaker: Peter L. Christiansen (pdf slides 600 Kb)
With PV Larsen, O Bang, JFR Archilla and Yu B Gaididei.

Abstract: A plane bent chain of Morse oscillators with long-range dispersive interaction is first considered. Moving localized oscillations may be trapped in the bending region. Thus the chain geometry acts like an impurity. Energy funelling is observed in the case of random initial conditions modelling temperature.
Secondly, an augmented model of the DNA molecule including long-range interactions between twisted base pair dipoles is presented. A mechanism for bubble generation is found for sufficiently strong values of the dipole interaction coefficient. The relationship between bubble generation, curvature and twist is investigated. An analytical approach supports the numerical results.

NLDD 2004: Nonlinear Double Day on Macroscopic Effects of Anharmonic Excitations, Sevilla, Spain, 17-18 May 2004.