TY - GEN A1 - Schütte, Christof A1 - Huisinga, Wilhelm T1 - On Conformational Dynamics induced by Langevin Processes N2 - The function of many important biomolecules is related to their dynamic properties and their ability to switch between different {\em conformations}, which are understood as {\em almost invariant} or {\em metastable} subsets of the positional state space of the system. Recently, the present authors and their coworkers presented a novel algorithmic scheme for the direct numerical determination of such metastable subsets and the transition probability between them. Although being different in most aspects, this method exploits the same basic idea as {\sc Dellnitz} and {\sc Junge} in their approach to almost invariance in discrete dynamical systems: the almost invariant sets are computed via certain eigenvectors of the Markov operators associated with the dynamical behavior. In the present article we analyze the application of this approach to (high--friction) Langevin models describing the dynamical behavior of molecular systems coupled to a heat bath. We will see that this can be related to theoretical results for (symmetric) semigroups of Markov operators going back to {\sc Davies}. We concentrate on a comparison of our approach in respect to random perturbations of dynamical systems. T3 - ZIB-Report - SC-99-25 KW - Smoluchowski equation KW - Fokker--Planck equation KW - semigroup of Markov operators KW - canonical ensemble KW - small noise KW - first exit time KW - half time perio Y1 - 1999 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-zib/frontdoor/index/index/docId/413 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-4130 ER -