title: Boundary layers in stochastic thermodynamics.
abstract: We study the problem of optimizing released heat or dissipated work in stochastic thermodynamics. In the overdamped limit these functionals have singular solutions, previously interpreted as protocol jumps. We show that a regularization, penalizing a properly defined acceleration, changes the jumps into boundary layers of finite width. We show that in the limit of vanishing boundary layer width no heat is dissipated in the boundary layer, while work can be done. We further give an alternative interpretation of the fact that the optimal protocols in the overdamped limit are given by optimal deterministic transport (Burgers equation).
authors.affiliation: ACCESS Linnaeus Centre, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden and Department of Computational Biology, AlbaNova University Centre, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. eaurell@kth.se
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Aurell
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mejía-Monasterio
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Muratore-Ginanneschi
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D015233:Models, Statistical; D013269:Stochastic Processes; D013816:Thermodynamics