Universal bounds on entropy production from fluctuating coarse-grained trajectories
Fuente:
arXiv
Gespeichert in:
| 1. Verfasser: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2025
|
| Schlagworte: | |
| Online-Zugang: | |
| Tags: |
Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
|
| _version_ | 1866915661482033152 |
|---|---|
| author | Seifert, Udo |
| author_facet | Seifert, Udo |
| contents | Entropy production is arguably the most universally applicable measure of non-equilibrium behavior, particularly for systems coupled to a heat bath. This setting encompasses driven soft matter as well as biomolecular, biochemical, and biophysical systems. Despite its central role, direct measurements of entropy production remain challenging - especially in small systems dominated by fluctuations. The main difficulty arises because not all degrees of freedom contributing to entropy production are experimentally accessible. A key question, therefore, is how to infer entropy production from coarse-grained observations, such as time series of experimentally measurable variables. Over the past decade, stochastic thermodynamics has provided several inequalities that yield model-free lower bounds on entropy production from such coarse-grained data. The major approaches rely on observations of coarse-grained states, fluctuating currents or ticks, correlation functions of coarse-grained observables, and waiting-time distributions between so-called Markovian events, which correspond to transitions between mesoscopic states. Here, we systematically review these techniques valid under the sole assumption of a Markovian, i.e., memoryless, dynamics on an underlying, not necessarily observable, network of states or following a possibly high-dimensional Langevin equation. We discuss in detail the large class of non-equilibrium steady states and highlight extensions of these methods to time-dependent and relaxing systems. While our focus is on mean entropy production, we also summarize recent progress in quantifying entropy production along individual coarse-grained trajectories. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_07772 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Universal bounds on entropy production from fluctuating coarse-grained trajectories Seifert, Udo Statistical Mechanics Quantitative Methods Entropy production is arguably the most universally applicable measure of non-equilibrium behavior, particularly for systems coupled to a heat bath. This setting encompasses driven soft matter as well as biomolecular, biochemical, and biophysical systems. Despite its central role, direct measurements of entropy production remain challenging - especially in small systems dominated by fluctuations. The main difficulty arises because not all degrees of freedom contributing to entropy production are experimentally accessible. A key question, therefore, is how to infer entropy production from coarse-grained observations, such as time series of experimentally measurable variables. Over the past decade, stochastic thermodynamics has provided several inequalities that yield model-free lower bounds on entropy production from such coarse-grained data. The major approaches rely on observations of coarse-grained states, fluctuating currents or ticks, correlation functions of coarse-grained observables, and waiting-time distributions between so-called Markovian events, which correspond to transitions between mesoscopic states. Here, we systematically review these techniques valid under the sole assumption of a Markovian, i.e., memoryless, dynamics on an underlying, not necessarily observable, network of states or following a possibly high-dimensional Langevin equation. We discuss in detail the large class of non-equilibrium steady states and highlight extensions of these methods to time-dependent and relaxing systems. While our focus is on mean entropy production, we also summarize recent progress in quantifying entropy production along individual coarse-grained trajectories. |
| title | Universal bounds on entropy production from fluctuating coarse-grained trajectories |
| topic | Statistical Mechanics Quantitative Methods |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07772 |