Thermodynamic time asymmetry in nonequilibrium fluctuations

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

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

We here present the complete analysis of experiments on driven Brownian motion and electric noise in a $RC$ circuit, showing that thermodynamic entropy production can be related to the breaking of time-reversal symmetry in the statistical description of these nonequilibrium systems. The symmetry breaking can be expressed in terms of dynamical entropies per unit time, one for the forward process and the other for the time-reversed process. These entropies per unit time characterize dynamical randomness, i.e., temporal disorder, in time series of the nonequilibrium fluctuations. Their difference gives the well-known thermodynamic entropy production, which thus finds its origin in the time asymmetry of dynamical randomness, alias temporal disorder, in systems driven out of equilibrium.

Mots clés: time reversibility; out of equilibrium; entropy production rate

Domaines: Mécanique statistique [cond-mat.stat-mech]

David Andrieux, Sergio Ciliberto, Nicolas Garnier, Pierre Gaspard, Sylvain Joubaud, et al.. Thermodynamic time asymmetry in nonequilibrium fluctuations. 2007. ⟨ensl-00180234v2⟩