We investigate irreversibility and dissipation in single molecules that
cooperatively fold/unfold in a two state manner under the action of mechanical
force. We apply path thermodynamics to derive analytical expressions for the
average dissipated work and the average hopping number in two state systems. It
is shown how these quantities only depend on two parameters that characterize
the folding/unfolding kinetics of the molecule: the fragility and the
coexistence hopping rate. The latter has to be rescaled to take into account
the appropriate experimental setup. Finally we carry out pulling experiments
with optical tweezers in a specifically designed DNA hairpin that shows
two-state cooperative folding. We then use these experimental results to
validate our theoretical predictions.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figure
