Work and dissipation fluctuations near the stochastic resonance of a colloidal particle

Abstract

The orientation fluctuations of the director of a liquid crystal are\nmeasured, by a sensitive polarization interferometer, close to the\nFr\\'eedericksz transition, which is a second order transition driven by an\nelectric field. We show that near the critical value of the field the spatially\naveraged order parameter has a generalized Gumbel distribution instead of a\nGaussian one. The latter is recovered away from the critical point. The\nrelevance of slow modes is pointed out. The parameter of generalized Gumbel is\nrelated to the effective number of degrees of freedom.\n