English

Superstatistical generalization of the work fluctuation theorem

Statistical Mechanics 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

We derive a generalized version of the work fluctuation theorem for nonequilibrium systems with spatio-temporal temperature fluctuations. For chi-square distributed inverse temperature we obtain a generalized fluctuation theorem based on q-exponentials, whereas for other temperature distributions more complicated formulae arise. Since q-exponentials have a power law decay, the decay rate in this generalized fluctuation theorem is much slower than the conventional exponential decay. This implies that work fluctuations can be of relevance for the design of micro and nano structures, since the work done on the system is relatively much larger than in the conventional fluctuation theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0312399,
  title  = {Superstatistical generalization of the work fluctuation theorem},
  author = {C. Beck and E. G. D. Cohen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0312399},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

13 pages. Contribution to the Proceedings of `Trends and Perspectives in Extensive and Nonextensive Statistical Mechanics', in honour of Constantino Tsallis' 60th birthday (to appear in Physica A)