Experimental study of work fluctuations in a harmonic oscillator

Sylvain Joubaud (1) , Nicolas B. Garnier (1) , Frédéric Douarche (1) , Artyom Petrosyan (1) , Sergio Ciliberto (1)

1 Phys-ENS - Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS Lyon

The work fluctuations of a harmonic oscillator in contact with a thermostat and driven out of equilibrium by an external force are studied experimentally. For the work both the transient and stationary state fluctuation theorems hold. The finite time corrections are very different from those of a first order Langevin equation. The heat and work fluctuations are studied when a periodic forcing is applied to the oscillator. The importance of the choice of the ''good work'' to compute the free energy from the Jarzinsky equality is discussed.

Keywords: Fluctuation theorems; Harmonic oscillator; Work fluctuations

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

Sylvain Joubaud, Nicolas B. Garnier, Frédéric Douarche, Artyom Petrosyan, Sergio Ciliberto. Experimental study of work fluctuations in a harmonic oscillator. PRL, 2009, 97 (140603), pp.4. ⟨ensl-00138572⟩