Similarities and differences between non-equilibrium steady states and time-periodic driving in diffusive systems

D. M. Busiello, C. Jarzynski, O. Raz

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A system that violates detailed balance evolves asymptotically into a non-equilibrium steady state (NESS) with non-vanishing currents. Analogously, when detailed balance holds at any instant of time but the system is driven through time-periodic variations of external parameters, it evolves toward a time-periodic state, which can also support non-vanishing currents. In both cases the maintenance of currents throughout the system incurs a cost in terms of entropy production. Here we compare these two scenarios for one dimensional diffusive systems with periodic boundary condition, a framework commonly used to model biological and artificial molecular machines. We first show that the entropy production rate in a periodically driven system is necessarily greater than that in a stationary system without detailed balance, when both are described by the same (time-averaged) current and probability distribution. Next, we show how to construct both a NESS and a periodic driving that support a given time averaged probability distribution and current. Lastly, we show that although the entropy production rate of a periodically driven system is higher than that of an equivalent steady state, the difference between the two entropy production rates can be tuned to be arbitrarily small.

Original languageAmerican English
Article number093015
Number of pages11
JournalNew Journal of Physics
Volume20
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Sep 2018

Keywords

  • Fokker-Planck equation
  • non-equilibrium steady state
  • periodic driving

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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