Entropy Production in Open Systems: The Predominant Role of Intra-Environment Correlations

We show that the entropy production in small open systems coupled to environments made of extended baths is predominantly caused by the displacement of the environment from equilibrium rather than, as often assumed, the mutual information between the system and the environment. The latter contribution is strongly bounded from above by the Araki-Lieb inequality, and therefore is not time-extensive, in contrast to the entropy production itself. We confirm our results with exact numerical calculations of the system-environment dynamics.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, with the Supplemental Materia

Conservation Laws shape Dissipation

Starting from the most general formulation of stochastic thermodynamics---i.e. a thermodynamically consistent nonautonomous stochastic dynamics describing systems in contact with several reservoirs---, we define a procedure to identify the conservative and the minimal set of nonconservative contributions in the entropy production. The former is expressed as the difference between changes caused by time-dependent drivings and a generalized potential difference. The latter is a sum over the minimal set of flux--force contributions controlling the dissipative flows across the system. When the system is initially prepared at equilibrium (e.g. by turning off drivings and forces), a finite-time detailed fluctuation theorem holds for the different contributions. Our approach relies on identifying the complete set of conserved quantities and can be viewed as the extension of the theory of generalized Gibbs ensembles to nonequilibrium situations.Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables. Published version in double column forma

Mutual Entropy-Production and Sensing in Bipartite Systems

We introduce and analyze the notion of mutual entropy-production (MEP) in autonomous systems. Evaluating MEP rates is in general a difficult task due to non-Markovian effects. For bipartite systems, we provide closed expressions in various limiting regimes which we verify using numerical simulations. Based on the study of a biochemical and an electronic sensing model, we suggest that the MEP rates provide a relevant measure of the accuracy of sensing.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Pseudo-differential operators with nonlinear quantizing functions

In this paper we develop the calculus of pseudo-differential operators corresponding to the quantizations of the form $$Au(x)=\int_{\mathbb{R}^n}\int_{\mathbb{R}^n}e^{i(x-y)\cdot\xi}\sigma(x+\tau(y-x),\xi)u(y)dyd\xi,$$ where $\tau:\mathbb{R}^n\to\mathbb{R}^n$ is a general function. In particular, for the linear choices $\tau(x)=0$, $\tau(x)=x$, and $\tau(x)=\frac{x}{2}$ this covers the well-known Kohn-Nirenberg, anti-Kohn-Nirenberg, and Weyl quantizations, respectively. Quantizations of such type appear naturally in the analysis on nilpotent Lie groups for polynomial functions $\tau$ and here we investigate the corresponding calculus in the model case of $\mathbb{R}^n$. We also give examples of nonlinear $\tau$ appearing on the polarised and non-polarised Heisenberg groups, inspired by the recent joint work with Marius Mantoiu.Comment: 26 page

Fluctuation theorems for quantum master equations

A quantum fluctuation theorem for a driven quantum subsystem interacting with its environment is derived based solely on the assumption that its reduced density matrix obeys a closed evolution equation i.e. a quantum master equation (QME). Quantum trajectories and their associated entropy, heat and work appear naturally by transforming the QME to a time dependent Liouville space basis that diagonalizes the instantaneous reduced density matrix of the subsystem. A quantum integral fluctuation theorem, a steady state fluctuation theorem and the Jarzynski relation are derived in a similar way as for classical stochastic dynamics.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Stochastic thermodynamics for "Maxwell demon" feedbacks

We propose a way to incorporate the effect of a specific class of feedback processes into stochastic thermodynamics. These "Maxwell demon" feedbacks do not affect the system energetics but only the energy barriers between the system states (in a way which depends on the system states). They are thus of a purely informational nature. We show that the resulting formalism can be applied to study the thermodynamic effect of a feedback process acting on electron transfers through a junction.Comment: 3 figures, v2:accepted in EP

Effective thermodynamics for a marginal observer

Thermodynamics is usually formulated on the presumption that the observer has complete information about the system he/she deals with: no parasitic current, exact evaluation of the forces that drive the system. For example, the acclaimed Fluctuation Relation (FR), relating the probability of time-forward and time-reversed trajectories, assumes that the measurable transitions suffice to characterize the process as Markovian (in our case, a continuous-time jump process). However, most often the observer only measures a marginal current. We show that he/she will nonetheless produce an effective description that does not dispense with the fundamentals of thermodynamics, including the FR and the 2nd law. Our results stand on the mathematical construction of a hidden time reversal of the dynamics, and on the physical requirement that the observed current only accounts for a single transition in the configuration space of the system. We employ a simple abstract example to illustrate our results and to discuss the feasibility of generalizations.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur

Transient fluctuation theorems for the currents and initial equilibrium ensembles

We prove a transient fluctuation theorem for the currents for continuous-time Markov jump processes with stationary rates, generalizing an asymptotic result by Andrieux and Gaspard [J. Stat. Phys. 127, 107 (2007)] to finite times. The result is based on a graph theoretical decomposition in cycle currents and an additional set of tidal currents that characterize the transient relaxation regime. The tidal term can then be removed by a preferred choice of a suitable initial equilibrium ensemble, a result that provides the general theory for the fluctuation theorem without ensemble quantities recently addressed in [Phys. Rev. E 89, 052119 (2014)]. As an example we study the reaction network of a simple stochastic chemical engine, and finally we digress on general properties of fluctuation relations for more complex chemical reaction networks.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures. Sign error corrected in Eq.(50) and followin

Quantum master equation for the microcanonical ensemble

By using projection superoperators, we present a new derivation of the quantum master equation first obtained by the Authors in Phys. Rev. E {\bf 68}, 066112 (2003). We show that this equation describes the dynamics of a subsystem weakly interacting with an environment of finite heat capacity and initially described by a microcanonical distribution. After applying the rotating wave approximation to the equation, we show that the subsystem dynamics preserves the energy of the total system (subsystem plus environment) and tends towards an equilibrium state which corresponds to equipartition inside the energy shell of the total system. For infinite heat capacity environments, this equation reduces to the Redfield master equation for a subsystem interacting with a thermostat. These results should be of particular interest to describe relaxation and decoherence in nanosystems where the environment can have a finite number of degrees of freedom and the equivalence between the microcanonical and the canonical ensembles is thus not always guaranteed.Comment: 8 pages, 0 figures; v2: typos in eq 42 and 43 corrected; v3: submitted to Phys.Rev.E; v4: accepted in Phys.Rev.