Figure 2.

Performance of the insulator measured by the competition effect $\mathcal{C}$ and distortion $\mathcal{D}$ of the output in the system with an insulator (Eq. 10), tested over a range of X_tot and Y_tot varied independently from 10 to 10,000 in logarithmic steps. For simplicity, $\mathcal{C}$ and $\mathcal{D}$ are rescaled such that the smallest (best) values are equal to one. Points are shaded according to the logarithm of the rate of energy consumption of the PD cycle. (Solid dots) Pareto efficient parameter points. Rates of energy consumption increase as one approaches the Pareto front; obtaining small values of the competition effect is particularly costly. (Open dot) For comparison, $\mathcal{C}$ and $\mathcal{D}$ positions for the direct coupling system are marked. See Numerical Results on Pareto Optimality for details. This plot was made using the parameters k(t) = 0.01(1 + sin(0.005t)), δ = 0.01, α₁ = β₁ = 0.01, α₂ = β₂ = k₁ = k₂ = 10, k_on = k_off = 10, and p_tot = 100.