Simulation on the Membrane Potential Variations by THz Unipolar Stimulation with Triangle Envelope

Terahertz has recently shown new application prospects in non-invasive brain-machine communications. Terahertz stimulation can induce the information communication of cells. Cell membrane potentials are significant electrical variable in cell communication. However, the membrane potential variations are far from being understood fully under the terahertz stimulation. This paper studies the membrane potential variations of a cell under terahertz unipolar stimulation with triangle envelope, by means of the cell model of ion flow considering Na+, K+-ATPase and hydrophilic pores in cell membrane. From the numerical results, except where the cell membrane in the cell is nearly parallel to the terahertz electric fields, the absolute values of the membrane potentials increase first and then decrease towards zero under the stimulation. During those variation processes, the membrane potentials vibrate at the terahertz frequency the same as the stimulation. Besides, the variation rates of the membrane potentials show quasi pulse train forms at the same terahertz frequency during the stimulation, and the envelopes of the variation rates show triangle envelope, and additionally the triangle envelopes of the variation rates at some polar angles of the cell are out of shape near the end of the terahertz unipolar stimulation. This indicates that the triangle envelope of the terahertz unipolar stimulation can be delivered into the membrane potentials of the biological cell, and shows a potential way of transferring the triangle envelope signal in terahertz unipolar picosecond pulse train into biological cells for the applications in the brain-machine communications.