Thermodynamic time asymmetry in non-equilibrium fluctuations

Abstract

We here present the complete analysis of experiments on driven Brownian motion and electric noise inan RC circuit, showing that thermodynamic entropy production can be related to the breaking oftime-reversal symmetry in the statistical description of these non-equilibrium systems. Thesymmetry breaking can be expressed in terms of dynamical entropies per unittime, one for the forward process and the other for the time-reversed process.These entropies per unit time characterize dynamical randomness, i.e., temporaldisorder, in time series of the non-equilibrium fluctuations. Their difference gives thewell-known thermodynamic entropy production, which thus finds its origin in the timeasymmetry of dynamical randomness, alias temporal disorder, in systems driven out ofequilibrium.