Limits of Predictions in Thermodynamic Systems: A Review
arXiv:1707.06680 · doi:10.1088/1361-6633/aa9101
Abstract
The past twenty years have seen a resurgence of interest in nonequilibrium thermodynamics, thanks to advances in the theory of stochastic processes and in their thermodynamic interpretation. Fluctuation theorems provide fundamental constraints on the dynamics of systems arbitrarily far from thermal equilibrium. Thermodynamic uncertainty relations bound the dissipative cost of precision in a wide variety of processes. Concepts of excess work and excess heat provide the basis for a complete thermodynamics of nonequilibrium steady states, including generalized Clausius relations and thermodynamic potentials. But these general results carry their own limitations: fluctuation theorems involve exponential averages that can depend sensitively on unobservably rare trajectories; steady-state thermodynamics makes use of a dual dynamics that lacks any direct physical interpretation. This review aims to present these central results of contemporary nonequilibrium thermodynamics in such a way that the power of each claim for making physical predictions can be clearly assessed, using examples from current topics in soft matter and biophysics.
18 pages, 6 figures
References in corpus (20)
- The large deviation approach to statistical mechanics
- Spontaneous motion in hierarchically assembled active matter
- Thermodynamic uncertainty relation for biomolecular processes
- Fluctuation-Dissipation: Response Theory in Statistical Physics
- Dissipation: The phase-space perspective
- Rare events and the convergence of exponentially averaged work values
- The Einstein relation generalized to non-equilibrium
- Thermodynamic costs of information processing in sensory adaption
- Cost and Precision of Brownian Clocks
- Universal bound on the efficiency of molecular motors
- An update on nonequilibrium linear response
- Lower bounds on dissipation upon coarse graining
- Quantum Operation Time Reversal
- Thermodynamics of statistical inference by cells
- An expression for stationary distribution in nonequilibrium steady state
- Role of External Flow and Frame Invariance in Stochastic Thermodynamics
- Representation of nonequilibrium steady states in large mechanical systems
- An illustrative example of the relationship between dissipation and relative entropy
- Continuity and boundary conditions in thermodynamics: From Carnot's efficiency to efficiencies at maximum power
- How statistical forces depend on thermodynamics and kinetics of driven media