Emergent second law for non-equilibrium steady states.

ABSTRACT: The Gibbs distribution universally characterizes states of thermal equilibrium. In order to extend the Gibbs distribution to non-equilibrium steady states, one must relate the self-information [Formula: see text] of microstate x to measurable physical quantities. This is a central problem in non-equilibrium statistical physics. By considering open systems described by stochastic dynamics which become deterministic in the macroscopic limit, we show that changes [Formula: see text] in steady state self-information along deterministic trajectories can be bounded by the macroscopic entropy production Σ. This bound takes the form of an emergent second law [Formula: see text], which contains the usual second law Σ ≥ 0 as a corollary, and is saturated in the linear regime close to equilibrium. We

SUBMITTER: Freitas JN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9424242 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature