Abstract
We establish that entropy production, which is crucial to the characterization of thermodynamic irreversibility, is obtained through a variational principle involving the Kulback-Leibler divergence. A simple application of this representation leads to an information-theoretical bound on entropy production in thermal relaxation processes; this is a stronger inequality than the conventional second law of thermodynamics. This bound is also interpreted as a constraint on the possible path of a thermal relaxation process in terms of information geometry. Our results reveal a hidden universal law inherent to general thermal relaxation processes.
- Received 18 April 2019
- Revised 2 July 2019
- Corrected 11 May 2021
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.110603
© 2019 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Corrections
11 May 2021
Correction: The omission of a support statement in the Acknowledgments section has been remedied.