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Updated: May 31, 2026

Paramagnetic Relaxation Enhancement for Detecting and Characterizing Self-Associations of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins
Published on: September 23, 2021
Relaxation properties in classical diamagnetism
A Carati1, F Benfenati, L Galgani
1Dipartimento di Matematica, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Saldini 50, I-20133 Milano, Italy.
Abstract:
It is an old result of Bohr that, according to classical statistical mechanics, at equilibrium a system of electrons in a static magnetic field presents no magnetization. Thus a magnetization can occur only in an out of equilibrium state, such as that produced through the Foucault currents when a magnetic field is switched on. It was suggested by Bohr that, after the establishment of such a nonequilibrium state, the system of electrons would quickly relax back to equilibrium. In the present paper, we study numerically the relaxation to equilibrium in a modified Bohr model, which is mathematically equivalent to a billiard with obstacles, immersed in a magnetic field that is adiabatically switched on. We show that it is not guaranteed that equilibrium is attained within the typical time scales of microscopic dynamics. Depending on the values of the parameters, one has a relaxation either to equilibrium or to a diamagnetic (presumably metastable) state. The analogy with the relaxation properties in the Fermi Pasta Ulam problem is also pointed out.
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