Introduction to Physics of Biological Oscillators: New Insights into Non-Equilibrium and Non-Autonomous Systems

To set the subject of book in context, a short discussion of oscillatory dynamical systems with non-constant frequencies is provided. Such oscillators are widespread, especially (but not only) in biology. It is pointed out that they can be considered as thermodynamically open (physics) or non-autonomous (mathematics). The difficulty of treating and analysing data derived from such systems is that most earlier work, and most of the well-established methods, refer to dynamics where the natural frequencies remain constant. Recent progress is discussed in five sections corresponding to Parts of the book. They cover respectively theory, model-driven and data-driven approaches, biological oscillators, applications, and the future. Ways of using the book are suggested.