Related papers: Nonequilibrium control of thermal and mechanical c…
At the dawn of thermodynamics, Carnot's constraint on efficiency of heat engines stimulated the formulation of one of the most universal physical principles, the second law of thermodynamics. In recent years, the field of heat engines…
We demonstrate that the fluctuation theorem of Gallavotti and Cohen can be used to characterize the class of dynamics that arises in nonthermal systems of collectively interacting particles driven over random quenched disorder. By observing…
Thermodynamic principles are often deceptively simple and yet surprisingly powerful. We show how a simple rule, such as the net flow of energy in and out of a moving atom under nonequilibrium steady state condition, can expose the…
Using recent fluctuation theorems from nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, we extend the theory for voltage fluctuations in electric circuits to power and heat fluctuations. They could be of particular relevance for the functioning of…
Small thermodynamic systems exhibit peculiar behavior different from that observed in long-scale systems. Non-equilibrium processes taking place in those systems are strongly influenced by the presence of fluctuations which can be large.…
We analyze experimental data obtained from an electrical circuit having components at different temperatures, showing how to predict its response to temperature variations. This illustrates in detail how to utilize a recent linear response…
The thermodynamic properties of quantum heat engines are stochastic owing to the presence of thermal and quantum fluctuations. We here experimentally investigate the efficiency and nonequilibrium entropy production statistics of a spin-1/2…
The Heat theorem reveals the second law of equilibrium Thermodynamics (i.e.existence of Entropy) as a manifestation of a general property of Hamiltonian Mechanics and of the Ergodic Hypothesis, valid for 1 as well as $10^{23}$ degrees of…
The work fluctuations of an oscillator in contact with a thermostat and driven out of equilibrium by an external force are studied experimentally and theoretically within the context of Fluctuation Theorems (FTs). The oscillator dynamics is…
Systems that are driven out of thermal equilibrium typically dissipate random quantities of energy on microscopic scales. Crooks fluctuation theorem relates the distribution of these random work costs with the corresponding distribution for…
We consider a one-dimensional Brownian motion under nonequilibrium feedback control. Generally, the fluctuation-dissipation theorem (FDT) is violated in driven systems under nonequilibrium conditions. We find that the degree of the FDT…
Two fundamental ingredients play a decisive role in the foundation of fluctuation relations: the principle of microreversibility and the fact that thermal equilibrium is described by the Gibbs canonical ensemble. Building on these two…
Gibbs and Boltzmann definitions of temperature agree only in the macroscopic limit. The ambiguity in identifying the equilibrium temperature of a finite sized `small' system exchanging energy with a bath is usually understood as a…
The fluctuations in nonequilibrium systems are under intense theoretical and experimental investigation. Topical ``fluctuation relations'' describe symmetries of the statistical properties of certain observables, in a variety of models and…
We study the mechanical fluctuations of a micrometer sized silicon cantilever subjected to a strong heat flow, thus having a highly non-uniform local temperature. In this non-equilibrium steady state, we show that fluctuations are…
Fluctuations of the excess heat in an out of equilibrium steady state are experimentally investigated in two stochastic systems : an electric circuit with an imposed mean current and a harmonic oscillator driven out of equilibrium by a…
The characteristic function for heat fluctuations in a non equilibrium system is characterised by a large deviation function whose symmetry gives rise to a fluctuation theorem. In equilibrium the large deviation function vanishes and the…
The second law of thermodynamics posits that in closed macroscopic systems the rate of entropy production must be positive. However, small systems can exhibit negative entropy production over short timescales, seemingly in contradiction…
We consider heat fluctuations and fluctuation theorems for systems driven by multiple reservoirs. We establish a fundamental symmetry obeyed by the joint probability distribution for the heat transfers and system coordinates. The symmetry…
The mechanical properties within living cells play a critical role in the adaptive regulation of their biological functions upon environmental and internal stimuli. While these properties exhibit nonequilibrium dynamics due to the thermal…