English

Free energy surfaces from nonequilibrium processes without work measurement

Statistical Mechanics 2009-11-11 v2

Abstract

Recent developments in statistical mechanics have allowed the estimation of equilibrium free energies from the statistics of work measurements during processes that drive the system out of equilibrium. Here a different class of processes is considered, wherein the system is prepared and released from a nonequilibrium state, and no external work is involved during its observation. For such ``clamp-and-release'' processes, a simple strategy for the estimation of equilibrium free energies is offered. The method is illustrated with numerical simulations, and analyzed in the context of tethered single-molecule experiments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0510639,
  title  = {Free energy surfaces from nonequilibrium processes without work measurement},
  author = {Artur B. Adib},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0510639},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

15 pages, 3 figures (1 color); accepted to J. Chem. Phys

R2 v1 2026-07-22T11:24:28.055Z