محفوظ في:
التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
المؤلفون الرئيسيون: van der Meer, Jann, Dechant, Andreas
التنسيق: Preprint
منشور في: 2026
الموضوعات:
الوصول للمادة أونلاين:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.18321
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author van der Meer, Jann
Dechant, Andreas
author_facet van der Meer, Jann
Dechant, Andreas
contents Transferring a physical system from an initial to a final state while minimizing energetic losses is an interdisciplinary control problem that bridges stochastic thermodynamics and optimal transport theory. Recent research typically considers problems in which the optimal solution is realized via conservative forces, but whether this situation applies depends on the problem's constraints. In systems with complex topologies like discrete networks, the optimal, dissipation-minimizing protocol involves applying nonconservative forces along cycles if the timescales of the transitions in the network are fixed. We show that although nonconservative driving is optimal in this setting, a conservative protocol exists whose dissipation is at most twice the optimal one. This finding is complemented with an example modeling transport across an energy barrier, which illustrates such improvements of order 1 explicitly. Qualitatively, conservative driving falls short of achieving optimality because direct transport across the barrier is avoided. We conclude with a discussion that the optimality of nonconservative driving might be a generic phenomenon: As fewer degrees of freedom can be optimized, additional degrees of freedom due to adding nonconservative forces become more significant.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_18321
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Near-optimality of conservative driving in discrete systems
van der Meer, Jann
Dechant, Andreas
Statistical Mechanics
Transferring a physical system from an initial to a final state while minimizing energetic losses is an interdisciplinary control problem that bridges stochastic thermodynamics and optimal transport theory. Recent research typically considers problems in which the optimal solution is realized via conservative forces, but whether this situation applies depends on the problem's constraints. In systems with complex topologies like discrete networks, the optimal, dissipation-minimizing protocol involves applying nonconservative forces along cycles if the timescales of the transitions in the network are fixed. We show that although nonconservative driving is optimal in this setting, a conservative protocol exists whose dissipation is at most twice the optimal one. This finding is complemented with an example modeling transport across an energy barrier, which illustrates such improvements of order 1 explicitly. Qualitatively, conservative driving falls short of achieving optimality because direct transport across the barrier is avoided. We conclude with a discussion that the optimality of nonconservative driving might be a generic phenomenon: As fewer degrees of freedom can be optimized, additional degrees of freedom due to adding nonconservative forces become more significant.
title Near-optimality of conservative driving in discrete systems
topic Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.18321