SKM 2021 – scientific programme

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SYSD: Symposium SKM Dissertation Prize 2021

SYSD 1: Presentations of the Finalists for the 2021 SKM Dissertation Prize

SYSD 1.4: Invited Talk

Monday, September 27, 2021, 11:20–11:45, Audimax 2

The thermodynamics of stochastic systems with time delay — •Sarah A.M. Loos — ICTP, International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Strada Costiera, 11, 34151 Trieste TS, Italien

Recently, the field of stochastic thermodynamics has greatly advanced our understanding of biological, physical, and artificial microscopic systems, which fluctuate strongly due to thermal noise and often operate far from thermal equilibrium. Far less is known, however, when, in addition to noise, time-delayed forces act on the system, which may originate from feedback loops or may stem from communication delays between individual living or artificial-intelligent components. In this talk, I discuss technical challenges and uncover unexpected physical phenomena that arise from time delays. For example, an external time-delayed force may cool a stochastic system¹, in sharp contrast to non-delayed forces that always heat it up. When reversed in time, the history-dependence of a delay process transforms into a dependence on its own future, entailing acausality; which has nontrivial consequences for the thermodynamic arrow of time. In particular, the total entropy production is composed not only of the usual contributions of heat release and Shannon entropy change, but also of an information-theoretic term². We discuss this information-term and show relations between time-delayed stochastic process and the famous Maxwell demon thought experiment.

[1] Loos, Klapp, Sci.Rep. 9,11 (2019). Loos, Hermann, Klapp, Entropy 23, 696 (2021). [2] Loos, Klapp, NJP 22, 123051 (2020).