Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 31: Statistical Physics far from Equilibrium
DY 31.3: Talk
Friday, March 26, 2010, 11:00–11:15, H38
Revealing deviations from the fluctuation theorem — •Aljoscha Hahn1 and Holger Then2 — 1Institut für theoretische Physik, Technische Universität Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany — 2Institut für Physik, Carl von Ossietzky Universität, 26111 Oldenburg, Germany
Together with the Jarzynski relation, Crook's Fluctuation Theorem (CFT) is one of the main new theoretical results of statistical physics of irreversible processes, relating the probability of work necessary to realize a certain nonequilibrium process with that of the time-reversed process. Although it is in principle possible to test the CFT experimentally by measuring an amount of of work-values in either direction, the "verification" of the CFT becomes quite hard if the process is far from equilibrium, and the interpretation of the experiments with respect to the CFT using standard arguments (e.g. based on histograms) may remain suspicious.
Within the talk, we present a new and precise tool for testing the CFT on a given amount of experimental data which is strongly related to free-energy calculation. As key features, the method tells us simultaneously whether the amount of data collected is sufficient to make a statement on the CFT at all and whether the hypotheses that the CFT holds has to be rejected. On the other hand, if we a priori know that the CFT holds, which can be the case e.g. in computer experiments, the method can be used to detect systematic errors of the experimental setup.