Biological & Soft Matter Seminar: Optimal bounds and speed limits in Brownian stochastic thermodynamics

Abstarct:

The role played by fluctuations at mesoscopic scales raises fascinating questions that form a major topic of current transdisciplinary research. In this context, the development of stochastic thermodynamics and optical trapping experiments offers a perfect framework for investigating these questions, both from experimental and theoretical perspectives. One major concern in the field is the control of thermodynamical state transformations. Accelerated state-to-state transfers are currently at the heart of an intense research front, with the development of “Engineered Swift Equilibration” protocols, for instance. This talk will focus on the thermodynamic costs of isothermal and isochoric transformations that necessarily come along with acceleration. This identification of costs gives the possibility to optimize such transformations with respect to the duration of the transfer between the initial and final states. One remarkable outcome of optimization is the expansion of possibilities offered by acceleration, down to fundamental limits that take the forms of time-energy (isothermal) or time-entropy (isochoric) bounds that will be described.