Unlikely Fluctuations and Non-Equilibrium Work Theorems—A Simple Example

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• 作者：Paul Muzikar
• 刊名：Journal of Physical Chemistry B
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：June 30, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：120
• 期：25
• 页码：5720-5723
• 全文大小：206K
• 年卷期：0
• ISSN：1520-5207

文摘

An exciting development in statistical mechanics has been the elucidation of a series of surprising equalities involving the work done during a nonequilibrium process. Astumian has presented an elegant example of such an equality, involving a colloidal particle undergoing Brownian motion in the presence of gravity. We analyze this example; its simplicity, and its link to geometric Brownian motion, allows us to clarify the inner workings of the equality. Our analysis explicitly shows the important role played by large, unlikely fluctuations.