Scientific report

International Focus Workshop: The Dynamics of Nonlinear Stochastic Systems
Dates and duration: 6 and 7 of October, 2010
Coordinators: Igor M. Sokolov (Humboldt-University Berlin), Udo~Erdmann (Helmholtz Association, Berlin), Benjamin~Lindner (MPI-PKS)

The Workshop brought together experts working on applications of stochastic processes in various fields ranging from neurobiology and cellular biophysics to classical statistical physics. We were happy to welcome internationally renown researchers such as Vadim S. Anishchenko, Hans-Albert Braun, Werner Ebeling, Jordi Garcia Ojalvo, Peter Hänggi, Jürgen Kurths, Jerzy Luczka , Alexander Neiman, Arkady Pikovsky, Francesc Sagués, Lutz Schimansky-Geier, Eckehard Schöll, and Peter Talkner.
The meeting was devoted to Prof. Lutz Schimansky-Geier on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

In a keynote lecture, Peter Hänggi gave an entertaining review of Prof. Schimansky-Geier's work and highlighted, in particular, his contributions to the study of noise-induced phenomena in bistable and excitable systems, of pattern formation, of active Brownian motion, and of synchronization in stochastic nonlinear systems.

Several talks at this workshop dealt with the nonlinear stochastic dynamics of various biological systems. Jordi Garcia Ojalvo presented experimental and theoretical studies of noise-driven excitability in simple genetic circuits. The dynamics of intracellular calcium was discussed by Martin Falcke; response properties of simple model neurons (talk by Jan Freund) and of mechano-sensitive haircells (presented by Alexander Neiman) were further highlights. A number of speakers devoted their talks to a deeper discussion of noise-induced phenomena such as noise-induced transport in periodic structures (Jerzy Luczka) or coherence resonance in systems with type I or type II excitability and delayed feedback (Eckehard Schöll). Somewhat related to the latter problem, Vadim Anishchenko discussed the more general theoretical problem of how the notion of self-sustained oscillations can be generalized in a stochastic setting. A more applied but likewise fascinating problem was addressed by Francesc Sagués; he presented both experimental and theoretical results on transport and diffusion of paramagnetic colloids, which are driven and controlled by magnetic fields. Arkady Pikovsky showed results on the stability of solitons on disordered nonlinear lattices, and Jürgen Kurths discussed novel approaches on network-analysis of climate data. Finally, Peter Talkner demonstrated an interesting extension of the common first-passage calculus to nonstationary situations with time-dependent transition rates.

In summary, the workshop gave a stimulating state-of-the-art review of various applications involving the dynamics of nonlinear stochastic systems.
Benjamin Lindner, Udo Erdmann, and Igor M. Sokolov (organizers of the workshop)

For further information please e-mail to: nlisto10@pks.mpg.de