Description: This article discusses anomalous diffusion and environment-induced quantum decoherence. Abstract: We study the anomalous diffusion resulting from the standard map in the so-called accelerating state, and we observe that it is determined by unusually large times of sojourn of the classical trajectories in the fractal region at the border between the chaotic sea and the acceleration island. The quantum-mechanical breakdown of this property implies a coherence among so slightly different values of momentum as to become much more robust against environment fluctuations than the quantum localization corresponding to normal diffusion.

Description: This article discusses chaos and thermal conductivity. Abstract: We argue that the condition of local thermal equilibrium realized several years ago by Rich and Visscher [Phys. Rev. B 11, 2164 (1975)] through a process of mathematical convergence can be obtained dynamically by adopting the prescription of a recent paper [M. Bianucci, R. Mannella, B.J. West, and P. Grigolini, Phys. Rev. E 51, 3002 (1995)]. This should contribute to shedding light on the still unsolved problem fo the microscopic derivation of the heat Fourier law.

Description: This article discusses a dynamical approach to Lévy processes.Abstract: We derive the diffusion process generated by a correlated dichotomous fluctuating variable y starting from a Liouville-like equation by means of a projection procedure. This approach makes it possible to derive all statistical properties of the diffusion process from the correlation function of the dichotomous fluctuating variable Φy(t). Of special interest is that the distribution of the times of sojourn in the two states of the fluctuating process is proportional to d²Φy(t)/dt². Furthermore, in the special case where Φy(t) has an inverse power law, with the index β ranging from 0 to 1, thus making it nonintegrable, the authors show analytically that the statistics of the diffusing variable approximate in the long-time limit the α-stable Lévy distributions. The departure of the diffusion process of dynamical origin from the ideal condition of the Lévy statistics is established by means of a simple analytical expression. We note, first of all, that the characteristic function of a genuine Lévy process should be an exponential in time. We evaluate the correction to this exponential and show it to be expressed by a harmonic time oscillation modulated by the correlation function Φy(t). Since the characteristic function ...

Description: This article discusses fractional Brownian motion as a nonstationary process. Abstract: The long-range correlations in DNA sequences are currently interpreted as an example of stationary fractional Brownian motion (FBM). First the authors show that the dynamics of a dichotomous stationary process with long-range correlations such as that used to model DNA sequences should correspond to Lévy statistics and not to FBM. To explain why, in spite of this, the statistical analysis of the data seems to be compatible with FBM, the authors notice that an initial Gaussian condition, generated by a process foreign to the mechanism establishing the long-range correlations and consequently implying a departure from the stationary condition is maintained approximately unchanged for very long times. This is so because due to the nature itself of the long-range correlation process, it takes virtually an infinite time for the system to reach the genuine stationary state. Then the authors discuss a possible generator of initial Gaussian conditions, based on a folding mechanism of the nucleic acid in the cell nucleus. The model adopted is compatible with the known biological and physical constraints, namely, it is shown to be consistent with the information of current biological literature on folding as well ...

Description: This article discusses Lévy diffusion as an effect of sporadic randomness. Abstract: The Lévy diffusion processes are a form of nonordinary statistical mechanics resting, however, on the conventional Markov property. As a consequence of this, their dynamic derivation is possible provided that (i) a source of randomness is present in the corresponding microscopic dynamics and (ii) the consequent process of memory erasure is properly taken into account by the theoretical treatment.