Conceptual and practical approaches for investigating irreversible processes
arXiv:2410.15925 · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/adc6ab
Abstract
Current research in statistical mechanics mostly concerns the investigation of out-of-equilibrium, irreversible processes, which are ubiquitous in nature and still far from being theoretically understood. Even the precise characterization of irreversibility is the object of an open debate: while in the context of Hamiltonian systems the one-century-old proposal by M. Smoluchowski looks still valid (a process appears irreversible when the initial state has a recurrence time that is long compared to the time of observation [1]), in dissipative systems, particularly in the case of stochastic processes, the problem is more involved, and quantifying the "degree of irreversibility" is a pragmatic need. The most employed strategies rely on the estimation of entropy production: this quantity, although mathematically well-defined, is often difficult to compute, especially when analyzing experimental data. Moreover, being a global observable, entropy production fails to capture specific aspects of irreversibility in extended systems, such as the role of different currents and their spatial development. This review aims to address various conceptual and technical challenges encountered in the analysis of irreversibility, including the role of the coarse-graining procedure and the treatment of data in the absence of complete information. The discussion will be mostly based on simple models, analytically treatable, and supplemented by examples of complex, more realistic non-equilibrium systems.
79 pages, 19 figures
References in corpus (86)
- Stochastic thermodynamics, fluctuation theorems, and molecular machines
- Granger causality and transfer entropy are equivalent for Gaussian variables
- Thermodynamic uncertainty relation for biomolecular processes
- Statistical mechanics for natural flocks of birds
- Fluctuation-Dissipation: Response Theory in Statistical Physics
- Dissipation bounds all steady-state current fluctuations
- Entropy production as correlation between system and reservoir
- Predictability: a way to characterize Complexity
- Fluctuations and response of nonequilibrium states
- Equality connecting energy dissipation with violation of fluctuation-response relation
- The effective temperature
- Restoring a fluctuation-dissipation theorem in a nonequilibrium steady state
- Multidimensional Stationary Probability Distribution for Interacting Active Particles
- Irreversibility in active matter systems: Fluctuation theorem and mutual information
- Quantifying dissipation using fluctuating currents
- Temperature in and out of equilibrium: a review of concepts, tools and attempts
- Current fluctuations and transport efficiency for general Langevin systems
- On the heat flux and entropy produced by thermal fluctuations
- Thermodynamic uncertainty relation for time-dependent driving
- Inferring dissipation from current fluctuations
- Inferring entropy production from short experiments
- Entropy production and Kullback-Leibler divergence between stationary trajectories of discrete systems
- Lower bounds on dissipation upon coarse graining
- Inferring broken detailed balance in the absence of observable currents
- Uncertainty relations in stochastic processes: An information inequality approach
- Irreversibility, heat and information flows induced by non-reciprocal interactions
- The Brownian gyrator: a minimal heat engine on the nano-scale
- Estimating entropy production by machine learning of short-time fluctuating currents
- Non-equilibrium and information: the role of cross-correlations
- Entropy production estimation with optimal current
- Improved bounds on entropy production in living systems
- Energetic costs, precision, and efficiency of a biological motor in cargo transport
- Stochastic thermodynamics: From principles to the cost of precision
- Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation for Arbitrary Initial States
- The Entropy Production of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Active Particles: a path integral method for correlations
- Experimental Realization of a Minimal Microscopic Heat Engine
- Energy dissipation and violation of the fluctuation-response relation in non-equilibrium Langevin systems
- Brownian motors in micro-scale domain: Enhancement of efficiency by noise
- Entropy production and coarse-graining in Markov processes
- Stochastic Stirling engine operating in contact with active baths
- Fluctuation Theorem for Hidden Entropy Production
- Minimal Model of Stochastic Athermal Systems: Origin of Non-Gaussian Noise
- Variance Sum Rule for Entropy Production
- The fluctuation-dissipation relation: how does one compare correlation functions and responses?
- Statistical properties of the energy exchanged between two heat baths coupled by thermal fluctuations
- Cages and anomalous diffusion in vibrated dense granular media
- Direct Route to Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relations and Their Saturation
- Stochastic Energetics for Non-Gaussian Processes
- Entropy production of Multivariate Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes correlates with consciousness levels in the human brain
- Classical pendulum clocks break the thermodynamic uncertainty relation
- Entropy production in exactly solvable systems
- Absolute negative mobility induced by white Poissonian noise
- Time-resolved statistics of snippets as general framework for model-free entropy estimators
- Colossal Brownian yet non-Gaussian diffusion induced by nonequilibrium noise
- On the Fluctuation-Dissipation Relation in non-equilibrium and non-Hamiltonian systems
- Understanding causation via correlations and linear response theory
- Asymptotic derivation of Langevin-like equation with non-Gaussian noise and its analytical solution
- Comment on "Entropy Production and Fluctuation Theorems for Active Matter"
- Probing small-scale intermittency with a fluctuation theorem
- Tightest bound on hidden entropy production from partially observed dynamics
- Inference in non-equilibrium systems from incomplete information: the case of linear systems and its pitfalls
- On the thermal equilibrium state of large scale flows
- Non-Gaussian noise without memory in active matter
- Turbulence: does energy cascade exist?
- Statistical Equilibrium of Large Scales in Three-Dimensional Hydrodynamic Turbulence
- Generalized Fluctuation-Dissipation relations holding in non-equilibrium dynamics
- Information-theoretic analysis of the directional influence between cellular processes
- The role of the number of degrees of freedom and chaos in macroscopic irreversibility
- Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation in Interacting Many-Body Systems
- Causal analysis, Correlation-Response and Dynamic cavity
- Thermodynamic bounds for diffusion in non-equilibrium systems with multiple timescales
- Revealing the Nonequilibrium Nature of a Granular Intruder: The Crucial Role of Non-Gaussian Behavior
- Ergodic observables in non-ergodic systems: the example of the harmonic chain
- Extracting causation from millennial-scale climate fluctuations in the last 800 kyr
- Mechanism for giant enhancement of transport induced by active fluctuations
- A data-driven framework for dimensionality reduction and causal inference in climate fields
- Response and flux of information in extended non-equilibrium dynamics
- Time irreversibility and multifractality of power along single particle trajectories in turbulence
- Discrete synaptic events induce global oscillations in balanced neural networks
- Irreversibility and typicality: A simple analytical result for the Ehrenfest model
- Statistical features of systems driven by non-Gaussian processes: theory & practice
- Thermodynamic uncertainty relations in the presence of non-linear friction and memory
- Thermodynamic precision of a chain of motors: the difference between phase and noise correlation
- Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of the turbulent energy cascade: irreversibility and response functions
- Decomposing Thermodynamic Dissipation of Linear Langevin Systems via Oscillatory Modes and Its Application to Neural Dynamics
- A handy fluctuation-dissipation relation to approach generic noisy systems and chaotic dynamics
Cited by in corpus (4)
- The Fluctuation-Dissipation Relations: Growth, Diffusion, and Beyond
- Force-free kinetic inference of entropy production
- Entropy production and irreversibility in the linearized stochastic Amari neural model
- Unravelling the Flow of Information in a Nonequilibrium Process in the Presence of Hydrodynamic Interactions