Stokes efficiency of molecular motors with inertia

Abstract

A molecular motor utilizes chemical free energy to generate a unidirectional motion in a viscous media. The stochastic motion of a motor is governed by a Langevin equation coupled to the chemical occupancy state. The change of chemical occupancy state is governed by a discrete Markov process. The Stokes efficiency was introduced to measure how “efficiently” the motor uses chemical free energy to drive through the surrounding fluid. For the overdamping case where the effect of inertia is ignored, it was proved that the Stokes efficiency is bounded by 100% [H. Wang, G. Oster, The Stokes efficiency for molecular motors and its applications, Europhysics Letters 57 (2002) 134–140]. Here we present a proof for the general case.