Stochastic thermodynamics under coarse graining

A general formulation of stochastic thermodynamics is presented for open systems exchanging energy and
particles with multiple reservoirs. By introducing a partition in terms of “mesostates” (e.g., sets of “microstates”),
the consequence on the thermodynamic description of the system is studied in detail. When microstates within
mesostates rapidly thermalize, the entire structure of the microscopic theory is recovered at the mesostate level.
This is not the case when these microstates remain out of equilibrium, leading to additional contributions to the
entropy balance. Some of our results are illustrated for a model of two coupled quantum dots.