Irreversibility and Dissipation in Microscopic Systems

After an insightful introductory part on recent developments in the thermodynamics of small systems, the author presents his contribution to a long-standing problem, namely the connection between irreversibility and dissipation. He develops a method based on recent results on fluctuation theorems that is able to estimate dissipation using only information acquired in a single, sufficiently long, trajectory of a stationary nonequilibrium process. This part ends with a remarkable application of the method to the analysis of biological data, in this case, the fluctuations of a hair bundle.

The third part studies the energetics of systems that undergo symmetry breaking transitions. These theoretical ideas lead to, among other things, an experimental realization of a Szilard engine using manipulated colloids.

This work has the potential for important applications ranging from the analysis of biological media to the design of novel artificial nano-machines.

Nominated as an outstanding Ph.D. thesis by the Complutense University of Madrid A guide to understanding time irreversibility and how it can be quantified in stationary processes Develops techniques to estimate the dissipation rate in biological processes from single stationary trajectories Serves as a guide to estimate the Kullback-Leibler divergence between two probability distributions (discrete or continuous) Describes experimental measurement of the energetics of symmetry breaking Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt

Introduction.- Small-scale thermodynamics.- Irreversibility and dissipation.- Dissipation and kullback-leibler divergence.- Estimating the kullback-leibler divergence.- A case study: the flashing ratchet.- Application to biology: the ear hair bundle.- Experimental tests and applications of stochastic Thermodynamics.- Energetics of symmetry breaking.- Effective heating with random forces.- Conclusions.- Conclusions and outlook.