Towards spectrally selective catastrophic response

We study the large amplitude response of classical molecules to electromagnetic radiation, showing the universality of the transition from the linear to nonlinear response and brakeup at sufficiently large amplitudes. A range of models, from the simple harmonic oscillator to the successful Peyrard-Bishop-Dauxois (PBD) type models of DNA, lead to characteristic universal behavior: formation of domains of dissociation in the driving force amplitude-frequency space, characterized by the presence of local boundary minima. We demonstrate, that by simply following the progression of the resonance maxima in this space, while gradually increasing intensity of the radiation one must necessarily arrive at one of these minima, i.e. a point where the ultra-high spectral selectivity is retained. We show that this universal property, applicable to other oscillatory system, is a consequence of the fact that these models belong to the fold catastrophe universality class of the catastrophe theory. This in turn implies that for most bio-structures, including DNA, a high spectral sensitivity near the onset of the denaturation processes can be expected. Such spectrally selective molecular denaturation could find important applications in biology and medicine.