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Related papers: Non-equilibrium thermodynamics of small-scale syst…

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Stochastic thermodynamics and the associated fluctuation relations provide the means to extend the fundamental laws of thermodynamics to small scales and systems out of equilibrium. The fluctuating thermodynamic variables are usually…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-05-29 Aki Kutvonen , Tapio Ala-Nissilä , Jukka P. Pekola

We reconsider a well-known relationship between the fluctuation theorem and the second law of thermodynamics by evaluating a probability measure-valued process. In order to establish a bridge between microscopic and macroscopic behaviors,…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-03-19 Yuki Sughiyama , Masayuki Ohzeki

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…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-06-22 L. Dinis , I. A. Martínez , É. Roldán , J. M. R. Parrondo , R. A. Rica

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…

Biological Physics · Physics 2015-03-09 Purushottam D. Dixit

We derive a Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation bounding the mean squared displacement of a Gaussian process with memory, driven out of equilibrium by unbalanced thermal baths and/or by external forces. Our bound is tighter with respect to…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-05-23 Andrea Plati , Andrea Puglisi , Alessandro Sarracino

In this paper I am presenting an overview on several topics related to nonequilibrium fluctuations in small systems. I start with a general discussion about fluctuation theorems and applications to physical examples extracted from physics…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 F. Ritort

Equilibrium statistical mechanics provides a robust framework for characterizing phase transitions in systems whose microsopic dynamics are time-reversible. Efforts to develop and validate theoretical frameworks for time-irreversible,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-12-18 Stuart J. Thomson , Jack-William Barotta , Daniel M. Harris

We develop non-equilibrium theory by using averages in time and space as a generalized way to upscale thermodynamics in non-ergodic systems. The approach offers a classical perspective on the energy dynamics in fluctuating systems. The rate…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-09-29 James E. McClure , Steffen Berg , Ryan T. Armstrong

Here we investigate how local properties of particles in a thermal bath influence the thermodynamics of the bath. We utilize nanothermodynamics, based on two postulates: that small systems can be treated self-consistently by coupling to an…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2022-10-26 Ralph V. Chamberlin , Michael R. Clark , Vladimiro Mujica , George H. Wolf

We show how to construct non-equilibrium thermodynamics for systems too small to be considered thermodynamically in a traditional sense. Through the use of a non-equilibrium ensemble of many replicas of the system which can be viewed as a…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 J. M. Rubi , D. Bedeaux , S. Kjelstrup

In this paper we present a self-contained macroscopic description of diffusive systems interacting with boundary reservoirs and under the action of external fields. The approach is based on simple postulates which are suggested by a wide…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-12-18 L. Bertini , A. De Sole , D. Gabrielli , G. Jona-Lasinio , C. Landim

Boltzmann's principle is used to select the "most probable" realization (macrostate) of an isolated or closed thermodynamic system, containing a small number of particles ($N \llsp \infty$), for both classical and quantum statistics. The…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-05-13 Robert K. Niven

Correlations in fluids in nonequilibrium steady states are long ranged. Hence, finite-size effects have important consequences in the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of fluids. One consequence is that nonequilibrium temperature fluctuations…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2014-03-05 T. R. Kirkpatrick , J. M. Ortiz de Zárate , J. V. Sengers

Active matter generates order or patterns through nonequilibrium dynamics. An open research challenge is to determine how efficiently a nonequilibrium self-organising system can convert consumed energy into macroscopic order. We study an…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2026-05-07 Qianyang Chen , Mikhail Prokopenko

Traditionally, it is understood that fluctuations in the equilibrium distribution are not evident in thermodynamic systems of large $N$ (the number of particles in the system) \cite{Huang1}. In this paper we examine the validity of this…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2007-10-03 Kieran Kelly , Przemysław Repetowicz , Seosamh macRéamoinn

These lecture notes give a short review of methods such as the matrix ansatz, the additivity principle or the macroscopic fluctuation theory, developed recently in the theory of non-equilibrium phenomena. They show how these methods allow…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2009-11-13 B. Derrida

We study temperature fluctuations in mesoscopic $N$-body systems undergoing non-equilibrium processes from the perspective of stochastic thermodynamics. By introducing a stochastic differential equation, we describe the evolution of the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-05-19 Zhaoyu Fei , Yu-Han Ma

The theory of large deviations has been applied successfully in the last 30 years or so to study the properties of equilibrium systems and to put the foundations of equilibrium statistical mechanics on a clearer and more rigorous footing. A…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2018-09-14 Hugo Touchette , Rosemary J. Harris

The use of statistical methods to model gravitational systems is crucial to physics practice, but the extent to which thermodynamics and statistical mechanics genuinely apply to these systems is a contentious issue. This paper provides new…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2025-02-04 Lorenzo Lorenzetti

We propose a variational formulation for the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of discrete open systems, i.e., discrete systems which can exchange mass and heat with the exterior. Our approach is based on a general variational formulation for…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2018-12-05 François Gay-Balmaz , Hiroaki Yoshimura