A topological fluctuation theorem

Abstract

Fluctuation theorems specify the non-zero probability to observe negative entropy production, contrary to a naive expectation from the second law of thermodynamics. For closed particle trajectories in a fluid, Stokes theorem can be used to give a geometric characterization of the entropy production. Building on this picture, we formulate a topological fluctuation theorem that depends only by the winding number around each vortex core and is insensitive to other aspects of the force. The probability is robust to local deformations of the particle trajectory, reminiscent of topologically protected modes in various classical and quantum systems. We demonstrate that entropy production is quantized in these strongly fluctuating systems, and it is controlled by a topological invariant. We demonstrate that the theorem holds even when the probability distributions are non-Gaussian functions of the generated heat.

References in corpus (6)

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Role of Topology in Relaxation of One-Dimensional Stochastic Processes
• Diffusive oscillators capture the pulsating states of deformable particles
• Topological phases in discrete stochastic systems
• Stochastic Thermodynamics of Non-reciprocally Interacting Particles and Fields
• Fluctuation theorem for time-averaged work
• Irreversibility in scalar active turbulence: The role of topological defects