Quasistatic processes as step equilibrations

Abstract

The proportionality between the square of the distance traversed as measured in thermodynamic length and the minimum associated dissipation of a process is established in a new context independent of dynamical laws. A quasistatic thermodynamic process consisting of K steps, each equilibrating with an appropriate reservoir, is optimized with respect to the position of the steps and the allocation of the total time τ for the process among the steps. It is found that the steps should be of equal thermodynamic length. For large K the bounds based on thermodynamic length are recovered.