Entropy production for diffusion processes across a semipermeable interface

Abstract

The emerging field of stochastic thermodynamics extends classical ideas of entropy, heat, and work to nonequilibrium systems. One notable finding is that the second law of thermodynamics typically only holds after taking appropriate averages with respect to an ensemble of stochastic trajectories. The resulting average rate of entropy production then quantifies the degree of departure from thermodynamic equilibrium. In this paper we investigate how the presence of a semipermeable interface increases the average entropy production of a single diffusing particle. Starting from the Gibbs-Shannon entropy for the particle probability density, we show that a semipermeable interface or membrane S increases the average rate of entropy production by an amount that is equal to the product of the flux through the interface and the logarithm of the ratio of the probability density on either side of the interface, integrated along S. The entropy production rate thus vanishes at thermodynamic equilibrium, but can be nonzero during the relaxation to equilibrium, or if there exists a nonzero stationary equilibrium state (NESS). We then give a probabilistic interpretation of the interfacial entropy production rate using so-called snapping out Brownian motion. This also allows us to construct a stochastic version of entropy production. Finally, we illustrate the theory using the example of diffusion with stochastic resetting on a circle, and find that the average rate of interfacial entropy production is a nonmonotonic function of the resetting rate and the permeability. Published by the American Physical Society 2024