Entropy production and time asymmetry in nonequilibrium fluctuations

David Andrieux (1) , Pierre Gaspard (1) , Sergio Ciliberto (2) , Nicolas Garnier (2) , Sylvain Joubaud (2) , Artyom Petrosyan (2)

1 Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems
2 Phys-ENS - Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS Lyon

The time-reversal symmetry of nonequilibrium fluctuations is experimentally investigated in two out-of-equilibrium systems namely, a Brownian particle in a trap moving at constant speed and an electric circuit with an imposed mean current. The dynamical randomness of their nonequilibrium fluctuations is characterized in terms of the standard and time-reversed entropies per unit time of dynamical systems theory. We present experimental results showing that their difference equals the thermodynamic entropy production in units of Boltzmann's constant.

Keywords: Statistical physics; Brownian motion; Time reversal

Domains: Physics [physics]; Condensed Matter [cond-mat]; Statistical Mechanics [cond-mat.stat-mech]; Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; General Physics [physics.gen-ph]

David Andrieux, Pierre Gaspard, Sergio Ciliberto, Nicolas Garnier, Sylvain Joubaud, et al.. Entropy production and time asymmetry in nonequilibrium fluctuations. Physical Review Letters, 2007, 98, pp.150601. ⟨ensl-00138228v2⟩