Stochastic interruption model

The simplest scheme that accounts for the destruction of phase coherence is the so-called stochastic interruption model [Nikitin and Korst 1965 Simonius 1978 Silbey and Harris 1989]. Suppose the process of free tunneling is interrupted by a sequence of collisions separated by time periods vo = to do After each collision the system forgets its initial phase, i.e., the off-diagonal matrix elements of the density matrix p go to zero, resulting in the density matrix p ... 

Several attempts to describe replication-mutation networks by stochastic techniques were made in the past. We cannot discuss them in detail here, but we shall brieffy review some general ideas that are relevant for the quasispecies model. The approach that is related closest to our model has been mentioned already [51] the evolutionary process is viewed as a sequence of stepwise increases in the populations mean fitness. Fairly long, quasi-stationary phases are interrupted by short periods of active selection during which the mean fitness increases. The approach towards optimal adaptation to the environment is resolved in a manner that is hierarchical in time. Evolution taking place on the slow time scale represents optimization in the whole of the sequence space. It is broken up into short periods of time within which the quasi-species model applies only locally. During a single evolutionary step only a small part of sequence space is explored by the population. There, the actual distributions of sequences resemble local quasispecies confined to well-defined regions. Error thresholds can be defined locally as well. 

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