Fluctuation Theorem: 30 Years
A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Non-equilibrium Phenomena".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2023) | Viewed by 450
Special Issue Editors
Interests: non-equilibrium phenomena; dynamical systems; statistical mechanics; exactly solvable models
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: non-equilibrium systems; molecular dynamics simulation; statistical mechanics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Thirty years ago, in 1993, a seminal paper was published in Physical Review Letters titled “Probability of second law violations in shearing steady states”, which was written by Denis J. Evans, E. G. D. Cohen, and G. P. Morriss. It considered a relation, now known as a Fluctuation Theorem, concerning the relative probability of positive and negative average shear stress in a non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulation of a shearing fluid. Its conclusion was that a positive average shear stress is exponentially more likely than its opposite, with a factor proportional to the size of the system and to the observation time. Considering the limitations of long time and large N, the average shear stress would have a specific sign so it could be considered proportional to generalized entropy production. This clarified how negative generalized entropy production should be excluded in the physics of macroscopic objects observed over macroscopic times. Moreover, it opened possibilities of observing violations of this law in small systems, or even in large systems observed at a very high resolution or for sufficiently short times. It was postulated that this would apply in other non-equilibrium statistical mechanical systems. Subsequent work consolidated the foundations of the result, and both deterministic and stochastic Fluctuation Theorems for a wide range of systems have been obtained. These results have been confirmed by countless investigations in numerical simulations, as well as some experiments. Such developments have, in particular, led to an exact response theory that greatly generalizes the traditional linear response theory, which has proven successful and efficient in practical calculations.
A wide range of applications and theoretical developments have followed this ground-breaking paper. It is thus topical to ask the question: Where do we stand 30 years later? This Special Issue aims to collect papers providing the answer.
Prof. Dr. Lamberto Rondoni
Prof. Dr. Debra J. Searles
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- fluctuation theorem
- nonlinear response theory
- non-equilibrium systems
- statistical mechanics
- non-equilibrium simulation
- Jarzynski equality
- local fluctuation theorem
- response theory
- experimental results
