title: Work relations connecting nonequilibrium steady states without detailed balance.
abstract: Bridging equilibrium and nonequilibrium statistical physics attracts sustained interest. Hallmarks of nonequilibrium systems include a breakdown of detailed balance, and an absence of a priori potential function corresponding to the Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution, without which classical equilibrium thermodynamical quantities could not be defined. Here, we construct dynamically the potential function through decomposing the system into a dissipative part and a conservative part, and develop a nonequilibrium theory by defining thermodynamical quantities based on the potential function. Concepts for equilibrium can thus be naturally extended to nonequilibrium steady state. We elucidate this procedure explicitly in a class of time-dependent linear diffusive systems without mathematical ambiguity. We further obtain the exact work distribution for an arbitrary control parameter, and work equalities connecting nonequilibrium steady states. Our results provide a direct generalization on Jarzynski equality and Crooks fluctuation theorem to systems without detailed balance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.|Key Laboratory of Systems Biomedicine Ministry of Education, Shanghai Center for Systems Biomedicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Ruoshi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
authors.forename: Jianhong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.|Key Laboratory of Systems Biomedicine Ministry of Education, Shanghai Center for Systems Biomedicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Ping
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ao
mesh_terms: D005583:Fourier Analysis; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D013269:Stochastic Processes; D013816:Thermodynamics