Stochastic entropy production arising from nonstationary thermal transport.

Abstract

We compute statistical properties of the stochastic entropy production associated with the nonstationary transport of heat through a system coupled to a time dependent nonisothermal heat bath. We study the one-dimensional stochastic evolution of a bound particle in such an environment by solving the appropriate Langevin equation numerically, and by using an approximate analytic solution to the Kramers equation to determine the behavior of an ensemble of systems. We express the total stochastic entropy production in terms of a relaxational or nonadiabatic part together with two components of housekeeping entropy production and determine the distributions for each, demonstrating the importance of all three contributions for this system. We compare the results with an approximate analytic model of the mean behavior and we further demonstrate that the total entropy production and the relaxational component approximately satisfy detailed fluctuation relations for certain time intervals. Finally, we comment on the resemblance between the procedure for solving the Kramers equation and a constrained extremization, with respect to the probability density function, of the spatial density of the mean rate of production of stochastic entropy.