We show that a laser with a saturable absorber, described by the Yamada model, displays excitability just below threshold. A small perturbation, for example, a small input pulse, can trigger a single high output pulse, after which the system relaxes back to the off state. In order to study possible applications, such as pulse reshaping and clock recovery, approximate expressions are given for the excitability threshold and the delay between input and output pulses. Under the influence of optical noise, the system displays coherence resonance: below threshold the laser produces pulse trains with minimal jitter for a particular optimal noise level. This all-optical coherence resonance allows direct experimental verification.

The translocation dynamics of a polymer chain through a nanopore in the absence of an external driving force is analyzed by means of scaling arguments, fractional calculus, and computer simulations. The problem at hand is mapped on a one-dimensional anomalous diffusion process in terms of the reaction coordinate s (i.e., the translocated number of segments at time t ) and shown to be governed by a universal exponent alpha=2(2nu+2-gamma(1), where nu is the Flory exponent and gamma(1) is the surface exponent. Remarkably, it turns out that the value of alpha is nearly the same in two and three dimensions. The process is described by a fractional diffusion equation which is solved exactly in the interval 02, which provide a full description of the diffusion process. The comparison of the analytic results with data derived from extensive Monte Carlo simulations reveals very good agreement and proves that the diffusion dynamics of unbiased translocation through a nanopore is anomalous in its nature.