English

Work distribution in thermal processes

Statistical Mechanics 2020-03-18 v1

Abstract

We find the moment generating function (mgf) of the nonequilibrium work for open systems undergoing a thermal process, ie, when the stochastic dynamics maps thermal states into time dependent thermal states. The mgf is given in terms of a temperature-like scalar satisfying a first order ODE. We apply the result to some paradigmatic situations: a levitated nanoparticle in a breathing optical trap, a brownian particle in a box with a moving piston and a two state system driven by an external field, where the work mgfs are obtained for different timescales and compared with Monte Carlo simulations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1911.02099,
  title  = {Work distribution in thermal processes},
  author = {Domingos S. P. Salazar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.02099},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

5 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T12:06:47.603Z