Incollection,
Nonequilibrium work theorems: foundations and applications
Abstract Book of the XXIII IUPAP International Conference on Statistical Physics, Genova, Italy, (9-13 July 2007)
Abstract
When a macroscopic system in contact with a heat reservoir is
driven away
from equilibrium, the second law of thermodynamics places a strict
bound
on the amount of work performed on the system.
With a microscopic system the situation is more subtle, as thermal
fluctuations
give rise to a statistical distribution of work values.
In recent years it has been realized that such distributions encode
surprisingly
more information than one would expect from traditional thermodynamic
arguments.
I will discuss a number of exact results that relate equilibrium
properties of
the system, in particular free energy differences,
to the fluctuations in the work performed during such a
nonequilibrium process.
I will describe the theoretical foundations of these relations,
experimental tests,
and applications to single-molecule studies as well as numerical
strategies for
estimating free energy differences.
