Covariant Onsager and Onsager-Machlup principles for active and inertial dynamics

Abstract

The Onsager principle provides a variational route to the phenomenological equations of dissipative dynamics through the minimization of the Rayleighian. We develop a covariant formulation of the Onsager principle for active and inertial systems, ensuring geometric consistency under coordinate transformations. To further incorporate thermal fluctuations, we formulate the Onsager-Machlup principle for active and inertial systems by considering the Onsager-Machlup functional and the corresponding path probability for stochastic trajectories. Requiring that the path probability obeys the detailed fluctuation theorem, we show that the extended Onsager-Machlup theory is consistent with stochastic thermodynamics. The extended OP and OMP offer a unified and useful variational framework for deriving the dynamical equations of active and inertial systems.