Mittag Emil, Evans Denis J
Research School of Chemistry, The Australian National University, Canberra Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia.
Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2003 Feb;67(2 Pt 2):026113. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.67.026113. Epub 2003 Feb 14.
The fluctuation theorem (FT) is a generalization of the second law of thermodynamics that applies to small systems observed for short times. For thermostated systems it gives the probability ratio that entropy will be consumed rather than produced. In the present paper, we propose a version of the FT that applies to thermostated dissipative systems which respond to time-dependent dissipative fields. In testing the time-dependent fluctuation theorem we provide convincing evidence that sets of trajectories with conjugate values for the time-integrated entropy production, (+/-A+/-deltaA), are indeed (for time-reversible dynamical systems such as those studied here), time-reversal images of one another. This observation verifies the deep connection between time-reversal symmetry, the fluctuation theorem, and the second law of thermodynamics.
