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Model-Free Measurement of Local Entropy Production and Extractable Work in Active Matter

Sunghan Ro, Buming Guo, Aaron Shih, Trung V. Phan, Robert H. Austin, Dov Levine, Paul M. Chaikin, and Stefano Martiniani
Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 220601 – Published 21 November 2022
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Abstract

Time-reversal symmetry breaking and entropy production are universal features of nonequilibrium phenomena. Despite its importance in the physics of active and living systems, the entropy production of systems with many degrees of freedom has remained of little practical significance because the high dimensionality of their state space makes it difficult to measure. Here we introduce a local measure of entropy production and a numerical protocol to estimate it. We establish a connection between the entropy production and extractability of work in a given region of the system and show how this quantity depends crucially on the degrees of freedom being tracked. We validate our approach in theory, simulation, and experiments by considering systems of active Brownian particles undergoing motility-induced phase separation, as well as active Brownian particles and E.coli in a rectifying device in which the time-reversal asymmetry of the particle dynamics couples to spatial asymmetry to reveal its effects on a macroscopic scale.

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  • Received 22 April 2022
  • Accepted 9 September 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.220601

© 2022 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Statistical Physics & ThermodynamicsPolymers & Soft MatterGeneral Physics

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Measuring Entropy in Active-Matter Systems

Published 21 November 2022

A tool for estimating the local entropy production rate of a system enables the visualization and quantification of the out-of-equilibrium regions of an active-matter system.

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Authors & Affiliations

Sunghan Ro1,*, Buming Guo2,*, Aaron Shih2,3,4, Trung V. Phan5, Robert H. Austin5, Dov Levine1,†, Paul M. Chaikin2,‡, and Stefano Martiniani2,3,4,6,§

  • 1Department of Physics, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel
  • 2Center for Soft Matter Research, Department of Physics, New York University, New York 10003, USA
  • 3Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, New York 10003, USA
  • 4Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA
  • 5Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton 08544, New Jersey, USA
  • 6Simons Center for Computational Physical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York 10003, USA

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • dovlevine19@gmail.com
  • chaikin@nyu.edu
  • §sm7683@nyu.edu

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Issue

Vol. 129, Iss. 22 — 23 November 2022

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