How statistical forces depend on thermodynamics and kinetics of driven media

We study the statistical force of a nonequilibrium environment on a quasi-static probe. In the linear regime the isothermal work on the probe equals the excess work for the medium to relax to its new steady condition with displaced probe. Also the relative importance of reaction paths can be measured via statistical forces, and from second order onwards the force on the probe reveals information about nonequilibrium changes in the reactivity of the medium. We also show that statistical forces for nonequilibrium media are generally nonadditive, in contrast with the equilibrium situation. Both the presence of non-thermodynamic corrections to the forces and their nonadditivity put serious constraints on any formulation of nonequilibrium steady state thermodynamics.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; v1->v2: overall simplified presentation, modifications mainly in sections "Kinetic aspects" and "Nonadditivity

Thermal response in driven diffusive systems

Evaluating the linear response of a driven system to a change in environment temperature(s) is essential for understanding thermal properties of nonequilibrium systems. The system is kept in weak contact with possibly different fast relaxing mechanical, chemical or thermal equilibrium reservoirs. Modifying one of the temperatures creates both entropy fluxes and changes in dynamical activity. That is not unlike mechanical response of nonequilibrium systems but the extra difficulty for perturbation theory via path-integration is that for a Langevin dynamics temperature also affects the noise amplitude and not only the drift part. Using a discrete-time mesh adapted to the numerical integration one avoids that ultraviolet problem and we arrive at a fluctuation expression for its thermal susceptibility. The algorithm appears stable under taking even finer resolution.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Extrapolation to nonequilibrium from coarse grained response theory

Nonlinear response theory, in contrast to linear cases, involves (dynamical) details, and this makes application to many body systems challenging. From the microscopic starting point we obtain an exact response theory for a small number of coarse grained degrees of freedom. With it, an extrapolation scheme uses near-equilibrium measurements to predict far from equilibrium properties (here, second order responses). Because it does not involve system details, this approach can be applied to many body systems. It is illustrated in a four state model and in the near critical Ising model.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

A Novel Approach to Discontinuous Bond Percolation Transition

We introduce a bond percolation procedure on a $D$-dimensional lattice where two neighbouring sites are connected by $N$ channels, each operated by valves at both ends. Out of a total of $N$, randomly chosen $n$ valves are open at every site. A bond is said to connect two sites if there is at least one channel between them, which has open valves at both ends. We show analytically that in all spatial dimensions, this system undergoes a discontinuous percolation transition in the $N\to \infty$ limit when $\gamma =\frac{\ln n}{\ln N}$ crosses a threshold. It must be emphasized that, in contrast to the ordinary percolation models, here the transition occurs even in one dimensional systems, albeit discontinuously. We also show that a special kind of discontinuous percolation occurs only in one dimension when $N$ depends on the system size.Comment: 6 pages, 6 eps figure

Coarse-grained Second Order Response Theory

While linear response theory, manifested by the fluctuation dissipation theorem, can be applied at any level of coarse graining, nonlinear response theory is fundamentally of microscopic nature. For perturbations of equilibrium systems, we develop an exact theoretical framework for analyzing the nonlinear (second order) response of coarse grained observables to time-dependent perturbations, using a path-integral formalism. The resulting expressions involve correlations of the observable with coarse grained path weights. The time symmetric part of these weights depends on the paths and perturbation protocol in a complex manner; in addition, the absence of Markovianity prevents slicing of the coarse-grained path integral. We show that these difficulties can be overcome and the response function can be expressed in terms of path weights corresponding to a single-step perturbation. This formalism thus leads to an extrapolation scheme where measuring linear responses of coarse-grained variables suffices to determine their second order response. We illustrate the validity of the formalism with an exactly solvable four-state model and the near-critical Ising model.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Measurement of second-order response without perturbation

We study the second order response functions of a colloidal particle being subjected to an anharmonic potential. Contrary to typical response measurements which require an external perturbation, here we experimentally confirm a recently developed approach where the system's susceptibilities up to second order are obtained from the particle's equilibrium trajectory [PCCP $\mathrm{{\bf 17}}$, 6653 (2015)]. The measured susceptibilities are in quantitative agreement with those obtained from the response to an external perturbation.Comment: 4 figure