Minh David D L, Adib Artur B
Laboratory of Chemical Physics, NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-0520, USA.
Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2009 Feb;79(2 Pt 1):021122. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.79.021122. Epub 2009 Feb 18.
We apply path integrals to study nonequilibrium work theorems in the context of Brownian dynamics, deriving in particular the equations of motion governing the most typical and most dominant trajectories. For the analytically soluble cases of a moving harmonic potential and a harmonic oscillator with a time-dependent natural frequency, we find such trajectories, evaluate the work-weighted propagators, and validate Jarzynski's equality.