Optimizing thermally affected ratchet currents using periodic perturbations

Abstract

The purpose of the present work is to apply a recently proposed methodology to enlarge parameter domains for which optimal ratchet currents (RCs) are obtained. This task is performed by adding a suitable periodic perturbation Fj on a Ratchet mapping and the procedure consists in multiplying a particular class of generic Isoperiodic Stable Structures (ISSs), since the existence of non-zero RCs is directly related to the occurrence of stable domains. By proliferating the ISSs, it is possible to: (i) postpone thermal effects that usually increase the chaotic domain and (ii) demonstrate, by using a quantitative analysis, that the area which provides optimal RCs in the two-dimensional parameter space can be enlarged about 78%. In addition, for some specific parameter combinations, non-zero RCs can be induced through the birth of a new attractor, which moves away as the strength of Fj increases. Clearly, the methodology applied to the ratchet mapping is an efficient way to deal with unavoidable thermal effects and its consequent undesirable dynamics, specially in experimental setups. As a second general remark, we conclude that our main findings can be extended to issues related to transport problems.