Related papers: Minimal entropy production in the presence of anis…
The total entropy production fluctuations are studied in some exactly solvable models. For these systems, the detailed fluctuation theorem holds even in the transient state, provided initially the system is prepared in thermal equilibrium.…
We consider damped stochastic systems in a controlled (time-varying) quadratic potential and study their transition between specified Gibbs-equilibria states in finite time. By the second law of thermodynamics, the minimum amount of work…
In nature stationary nonequilibrium systems cannot exist on their own, rather they need to be driven from outside in order to keep them away from equilibrium. While the internal mean entropy of such stationary systems is constant, the…
Entropy, its production, and its change in a dynamical system can be understood from either a fully stochastic dynamic description or from a deterministic dynamics exhibiting chaotic behavior. By taking the former approach based on the…
Small systems in a thermodynamic medium --- like colloids in a suspension or the molecular machinery in living cells --- are strongly affected by the thermal fluctuations of their environment. Physicists model such systems by means of…
Nonequilibrium phase transitions can be typified in a similar way to equilibrium systems, for instance, by the use of the order parameter. However, this characterization hides the irreversible character of the dynamics as well as its…
Nonequilibrium processes break time-reversal symmetry and generate entropy. Living systems are driven out-of-equilibrium at the microscopic level of molecular motors that exploit chemical potential gradients to transduce free energy to…
Non-equilibrium processes in Schottky systems generate by projection onto the equilibrium subspace reversible accompanying processes for which the non-equilibrium variables are functions of the equilibrium ones. The embedding theorem which…
We extend the canonical Gibbs distribution, originally formulated for systems at equilibrium, to systems driven out of equilibrium. The stochastic dynamics of a small system are described by a probability distribution over discrete energy…
Entropy is one of the key thermodynamic variables reflecting changes in the state of matter. Unlike other thermodynamic variables, it is well-defined also for nonequilibrium steady states through its relation to information. Applying this…
The total entropy production and its three constituent components are described both as fluctuating trajectory-dependent quantities and as averaged contributions in the context of the continuous Markovian dynamics, described by stochastic…
We present a new outlook on the climate system thermodynamics, studying some of its macroscopic properties in terms of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics. We review and clarify the notion of efficiency of the climate system by…
The concept of entropy has been pivotal in the formulation of thermodynamics. For systems driven away from thermal equilibrium, a comparable role is played by entropy production and dissipation. Here we provide a comprehensive picture how…
Entropy production is a fundamental concept that plays a crucial role in the second law of thermodynamics and the measure of irreversibility. It imposes rigorous constraints on the kinds of transformations allowed in thermodynamic…
In view of the recent quest for well-behaved nonlinear extensions of the traditional Schroedinger-von Neumann unitary dynamics that could provide fundamental explanations of recent experimental evidence of loss of quantum coherence at the…
We address the emergence of entropy production in the non-equilibrium process of an open quantum system from the viewpoint of the environment. By making use of a dilation-based approach akin to Stinespring theorem, we derive an expression…
We analyze a mesoscopic conductor autonomously performing a thermodynamically useful task, such as cooling or producing electrical power, in a part of the system -- the working substance -- by exploiting another terminal or set of terminals…
This is a short review of the statistical mechanical definition of entropy production for systems composed of a large number of interacting components. Emphasis is on open systems driven away from equilibrium where the entropy production…
Fluctuations in parameters that are typically treated as fixed play a crucial role in the behavior of complex systems. However, to date, we lack a general non-equilibrium thermodynamic treatment of such a complex system. In this Letter, to…
Multistable non-equilibrium systems are abundant outcomes of nonlinear dynamics with feedback but still relatively little is known about what determines the stability of the steady states and their switching rates in terms of entropy and…