Entropy Production in Open Systems: The Predominant Role of Intraenvironment Correlations

in PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS (2019)

Micro-reversibility and thermalization with collisional baths

in Cornell University (2019)

Thermodynamics of Majority-Logic Decoding in Information Erasure

in Entropy (2019), 21(3), 284

Negative differential response in chemical reactions

in New Journal of Physics (2019), 21

Effective Fluctuation and Response Theory

in Journal of Statistical Physics (2019), 176(1), 94-168

Non-Markovianity and negative entropy production rates

in Physical Review E (2019), 99(1),

Collective Power: Minimal Model for Thermodynamics of Nonequilibrium Phase Transitions

in Physical Review. X (2018), 8(3), 031056

We propose a thermodynamically consistent minimal model to study synchronization which is made of driven and interacting three-state units. This system exhibits at the mean-field level two bifurcations ... [more ▼]

We propose a thermodynamically consistent minimal model to study synchronization which is made of driven and interacting three-state units. This system exhibits at the mean-field level two bifurcations separating three dynamical phases: a single stable fixed point, a stable limit cycle indicative of synchronization, and multiple stable fixed points. These complex emergent dynamical behaviors are understood at the level of the underlying linear Markovian dynamics in terms of metastability, i.e. the appearance of gaps in the upper real part of the spectrum of the Markov generator. Stochastic thermodynamics is used to study the dissipated work across dynamical phases as well as across scales. This dissipated work is found to be reduced by the attractive interactions between the units and to nontrivially depend on the system size. When operating as a work-to- work converter, we find that the maximum power output is achieved far-from-equilibrium in the synchronization regime and that the efficiency at maximum power is surprisingly close to the linear regime prediction. Our work shows the way towards building a thermodynamics of nonequilibrium phase transitions in conjunction to bifurcation theory. [less ▲]

Response functions as quantifiers of non-Markovianity

in Physical Review Letters (2018)

Quantum non-Markovianity is crucially related to the study of dynamical maps, which are usually derived for initially factorized system-bath states. We here demonstrate that linear response theory also ... [more ▼]

Quantum non-Markovianity is crucially related to the study of dynamical maps, which are usually derived for initially factorized system-bath states. We here demonstrate that linear response theory also provides a way to derive dynamical maps, but for initially correlated (and in general entangled) states. Importantly, these maps are always time-translational invariant and allow for a much simpler quantification of non-Markovianity compared to previous approaches. We apply our theory to the Caldeira-Leggett model, for which our quantifier is valid beyond linear response and can be expressed analytically. We find that a classical Brownian particle coupled to an Ohmic bath can already exhibit non-Markovian behaviour, a phenomenon related to the initial state preparation procedure. Furthermore, for a peaked spectral density we demonstrate that there is no monotonic relation between our quantifier and the system-bath coupling strength, the sharpness of the peak or the resonance frequency in the bath. [less ▲]

Thermodynamically consistent coarse graining of biocatalysts beyond Michaelis–Menten

in New Journal of Physics (2018), 20(4), 042002

Starting from the detailed catalytic mechanism of a biocatalyst we provide a coarse-graining procedure which, by construction, is thermodynamically consistent. This procedure provides stoichiometries ... [more ▼]

Starting from the detailed catalytic mechanism of a biocatalyst we provide a coarse-graining procedure which, by construction, is thermodynamically consistent. This procedure provides stoichiometries, reaction fluxes (rate laws), and reaction forces (Gibbs energies of reaction) for the coarse-grained level. It can treat active transporters and molecular machines, and thus extends the applicability of ideas that originated in enzyme kinetics. Our results lay the foundations for systematic studies of the thermodynamics of large-scale biochemical reaction networks. Moreover, we identify the conditions under which a relation between one-way fluxes and forces holds at the coarse-grained level as it holds at the detailed level. In doing so, we clarify the speculations and broad claims made in the literature about such a general flux–force relation. As a further consequence we show that, in contrast to common belief, the second law of thermodynamics does not require the currents and the forces of biochemical reaction networks to be always aligned. [less ▲]

Detailed Fluctuation Theorems: A Unifying Perspective

in Entropy (2018), 20(9),