Fluctuation-response relation for a nonequilibrium system with resolved Markovian embedding
Abstract
Fluctuation-response relations must be modified to describe nonequilibrium systems with non-Markovian dynamics. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that such relation is quantitatively recovered when the appropriate Markovian embedding of the dynamics is explicitly resolved. Using a colloidal particle optically trapped in a harmonic potential and driven out of equilibrium by a controlled colored noise, we study the response to a perturbation of the stiffness of the confining potential. While the reduced dynamics violates equilibrium fluctuation-response relations, we show that the dynamical response to the stiffness perturbation is fully determined by steady-state correlations involving the exact conjugate observable in the Markovian embedding.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.05198,
title = {Fluctuation-response relation for a nonequilibrium system with resolved Markovian embedding},
author = {Rémi Goerlich and Antoine Tartar and Yael Roichman and Igor M Sokolov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.05198},
year = {2026}
}