Thermodynamic time asymmetry in non-equilibrium fluctuations

Abstract

We here present the complete analysis of experiments on driven Brownian motion and electric noise in an RC circuit, showing that thermodynamic entropy production can be related to the breaking of time-reversal symmetry in the statistical description of these non-equilibrium 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 non-equilibrium 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. © IOP Publishing Ltd.