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We revisit the elementary problem of moving a particle in a harmonic trap in finite time with minimal work cost, and extend it to the case of an active particle. By comparing the Gaussian case of an Active Ornstein-Uhlenbeck particle and…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-07-16 Janik Schüttler , Rosalba Garcia-Millan , Michael E. Cates , Sarah A. M. Loos

We study the motion of an overdamped colloidal particle in a time-dependent non-harmonic potential. We demonstrate the first law-like balance between applied work, exchanged heat, and internal energy on the level of a single trajectory. The…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 V. Blickle , T. Speck , L. Helden , U. Seifert , C. Bechinger

Optimization of cyclic stochastic heat engines, a topic spanning decades of research, commonly assumes fixed control or response parameters at discrete points in the cycle-a limitation that often leads to experimentally impractical…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-07-02 Monojit Chatterjee , Viktor Holubec , Rahul Marathe

We provide a comprehensive analysis of the positional dynamics and average thermodynamics of an overdamped Brownian particle subject to both, harmonic confinement and annealed disorder due to a temporarily fluctuating trap stiffness. We…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-09-17 Deepak Gupta , Sabine H. L. Klapp

We study thermodynamic processes in contact with a heat bath that may have an arbitrary time-varying periodic temperature profile. Within the framework of stochastic thermodynamics, and for models of thermo-dynamic engines in the idealized…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-04-06 Olga Movilla Miangolarra , Rui Fu , Amirhossein Taghvaei , Yongxin Chen , Tryphon T. Georgiou

We analyze the translational and rotational motion of an ellipsoidal Brownian particle from the viewpoint of stochastic thermodynamics. The particle's Brownian motion is driven by external forces and torques and takes place in an…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2018-12-19 Raffaele Marino , Ralf Eichhorn , Erik Aurell

In this work, we develop and analyze adaptive feedback control strategies to stabilize and confine a nanoparticle at the unstable intensity minimum of an optical double-well potential. The resulting stochastic optimal control problem for a…

The optimal control of passive systems in equilibrium typically favours quasistatic (infinite-time) protocols. We show that a breakdown of quasistatic optimality occurs when the controller itself is dissipative. Concretely, we study a…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-05-08 Luca Cocconi , Henry Alston , Thibault Bertrand

Optimal control of nanomagnets has become an urgent problem for the field of spintronics as technological tools approach thermodynamically determined limits of efficiency. In complex, fluctuating systems, like nanomagnetic bits, finding…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2017-02-01 Grant M. Rotskoff , Gavin E. Crooks , Eric Vanden-Eijnden

Particle motion at the micro-scale is an incessant tug-of-war between thermal fluctuations and applied forces on one side, and the strong resistance exerted by fluid viscosity on the other. Friction is so strong that completely neglecting…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-05 Antonio Celani , Stefano Bo , Ralf Eichhorn , Erik Aurell

We apply Pontryagin's principle to drive rapidly a trapped overdamped Brownian particle in contact with a thermal bath between two equilibrium states corresponding to different trap stiffness $\kappa$. We work out the optimal time…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-01-30 Carlos A. Plata , David Guéry-Odelin , E. Trizac , A. Prados

For systems in an externally controllable time-dependent potential, the optimal protocol minimizes the mean work spent in a finite-time transition between given initial and final values of a control parameter. For an initially thermalized…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-05-13 Tim Schmiedl , Eckhard Dieterich , Peter-Simon Dieterich , Udo Seifert

Recently many results namely the Fluctuation theorems (FT), have been discovered for systems arbitrarily away from equilibrium. Many of these relations have been experimentally tested. The system under consideration is usually driven out of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-10-02 Rahul Marathe , Sourabh Lahiri

The energetic optimization problem, e.g., searching for the optimal switch- ing protocol of certain system parameters to minimize the input work, has been extensively studied by stochastic thermodynamics. In current work, we study this…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2010-01-07 Linchen Gong , Ming Li , Zhong-can Ou-yang

We study the nonequilibrium stationary state of a one-dimensional inertial run-and-tumble particle (IRTP) trapped in a harmonic potential. We find that the presence of inertia leads to two distinct dynamical scenarios, namely, overdamped…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-05-21 Debraj Dutta , Anupam Kundu , Sanjib Sabhapandit , Urna Basu

A system's configurational state can be manipulated using dynamic variation of control parameters, such as temperature, pressure, or magnetic field; for finite-duration driving, excess work is required above the equilibrium free-energy…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-09-16 Miranda D. Louwerse , David A. Sivak

We propose an optimization strategy to control the dynamics of a stochastic system transferred from one thermal equilibrium to another and apply it experimentally to a Brownian particle in an optical trap under compression. Based on a…

We present a stylized model of controlled equilibration of a small system in a fluctuating environment. We derive the equations governing the optimal control steering \emph{in finite time} the system between two equilibrium states. The…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2017-07-25 Paolo Muratore-Ginanneschi , Kay Schwieger

Recent experiments have implemented resetting by means of an external trap, whereby a system relaxes to the minimum of the trap and is reset in a finite time. In this work, we set up and analyse the thermodynamics of such a protocol. We…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-10-01 Kristian Stølevik Olsen , Deepak Gupta , Francesco Mori , Supriya Krishnamurthy

Characterizing and optimizing thermodynamic processes far from equilibrium is a challenge. This is especially true for nanoscopic systems made of few particles. We here theoretically and experimentally investigate the nonequilibrium…