Related papers: Harnessing higher-dimensional fluctuations in an i…
The overdamped Brownian dynamics of a harmonic oscillator is a paradigmatic system in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, which reliably models relevant stochastic systems such as colloidal particles submitted to optical confinement. In…
In this study, we advance the understanding of non-equilibrium systems by deriving thermodynamic relations for a heat engine operating under an exponentially decreasing temperature profile. Such thermal configurations closely mimic…
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…
We investigate thermodynamics of feedback processes driven by measurement. Regarding system and memory device as a composite system, mutual information as a measure of correlation between the two constituents contributes to the entropy of…
We propose a general framework to study transformations that drive an underdamped Brownian particle in contact with a thermal bath from an equilibrium state to a new one in an arbitrarily short time. To this end, we make use of a time and…
Colloidal heat engines extract power out of a fluctuating bath by manipulating a confined tracer. Considering a self-propelled tracer surrounded by a bath of passive colloids, we optimize the engine performances based on the maximum…
Recent advances in experimental control of colloidal systems have spurred a revolution in the production of mesoscale thermodynamic devices. Functional "textbook" engines, such as the Stirling and Carnot cycles, have been produced in…
We consider motion of an underdamped Brownian particle in a washboard potential that is subjected to an unbiased time-periodic external field. While in the limiting deterministic system in dependence of the strength and phase of the…
A Brownian particle moving in a staircase-like potential with feedback control offers a way to implement Maxwell's demon. An experimental demonstration of such a system using sinusoidal periodic potential carried out by Toyabe et al. has…
Active Brownian engines rectify energy from reservoirs composed of self-propelling non-equilibrium molecules into work. We consider a class of such engines based on an underdamped Brownian particle trapped in a power-law potential. The…
The thermodynamics of mesoscopic systems driven by time-varying temperatures is crucial for understanding biological systems, designing nanoscale engines, and performing micro-particle cooling. In this work, we analyze an underdamped…
We investigate stochastic thermodynamics of a two-particles Langevin system. Each particle is in contact with a heat bath at different temperatures $T_1$ and $T_2~(<T_1)$, respectively. Particles are trapped by a harmonic potential and…
For systems in an externally controllable time-dependent potential, the optimal protocol minimizes the mean work spent in a finite-time transition between two given equilibrium states. For overdamped dynamics which ignores inertia effects,…
We consider a rudimentary model for a heat engine, known as the Brownian gyrator, that consists of an overdamped system with two degrees of freedom in an anisotropic temperature field. Whereas the hallmark of the gyrator is a nonequilibrium…
Feedback control uses the state information of the system to actuate on it. The information used implies an effective entropy reduction of the controlled system, potentially increasing its performance. How to compute this entropy reduction…
We review a series of experimental studies of the thermodynamics of nonequilibrium processes at the microscale. In particular, in these experiments we studied the fluctuations of the thermodynamic properties of a single optically-trapped…
The efficiency of microscopic heat engines in a thermally heterogenous environment is considered. We show that, as a consequence of the recently discovered entropic anomaly, quasi-static engines, whose efficiency is maximal in a fluid at…
A colloidal particle embedded in a fluid can be used as a microscopic heat engine by means of a sequence of cyclic transformations imposed by an optical trap. We investigate a model for the operation of such kind of Brownian engines when…
Information can improve heat engine performance, but the underlying principles are still not so clear. Here we introduce a Carnot information machine (CIE) and obtain a quantitative relationship between the engine performance and…
While externally driven information engines are well understood, the thermodynamic constraints of their autonomous counterparts remain an open question. Here, we investigate the finite-time operation of an autonomous machine functioning as…