We verify the finite time fluctuation theorem for a linear Ising chain at its ends in contact with heat reservoirs. Analytic results are derived for a chain consisting of only two spins. The system can be mapped onto a model for particle transport, namely the symmetric exclusion process, in contact with thermal and particle reservoirs. We modify the symmetric exclusion process to represent a thermal engine and reproduce universal features of the efficiency at maximum power.
We investigate the role of the boundary in the symmetric simple exclusion process with competing nonlocal and local hopping events. With open boundaries, the system undergoes a first order phase transition from a finite density phase to an empty road phase as the nonlocal hopping rate increases. Using a cluster stability analysis, we determine the location of such an abrupt nonequilibrium phase transition, which agrees well with numerical results. Our cluster analysis provides a physical insight into the mechanism behind this transition. We also explain why the transition becomes discontinuous in contrast to the case with periodic boundary conditions, in which the continuous phase transition has been observed.
We study the probability distribution of entanglement in the Quantum Symmetric Simple Exclusion Process, a model of fermions hopping with random Brownian amplitudes between neighboring sites. We consider a protocol where the system is initialized in a pure product state of $M$ particles, and focus on the late-time distribution of Renyi-$q$ entropies for a subsystem of size $ell$. By means of a Coulomb gas approach from Random Matrix Theory, we compute analytically the large-deviation function of the entropy in the thermodynamic limit. For $q>1$, we show that, depending on the value of the ratio $ell/M$, the entropy distribution displays either two or three distinct regimes, ranging from low- to high-entanglement. These are connected by points where the probability density features singularities in its third derivative, which can be understood in terms of a transition in the corresponding charge density of the Coulomb gas. Our analytic results are supported by numerical Monte Carlo simulations.
We obtain the exact large deviation functions of the density profile and of the current, in the non-equilibrium steady state of a one dimensional symmetric simple exclusion process coupled to boundary reservoirs with slow rates. Compared to earlier results, where rates at the boundaries are comparable to the bulk ones, we show how macroscopic fluctuations are modified when the boundary rates are slower by an order of inverse of the system length.
We study the driven Brownian motion of hard rods in a one-dimensional cosine potential with an amplitude large compared to the thermal energy. In a closed system, we find surprising features of the steady-state current in dependence of the particle density. The form of the current-density relation changes greatly with the particle size and can exhibit both a local maximum and minimum. The changes are caused by an interplay of a barrier reduction, blocking and exchange symmetry effect. The latter leads to a current equal to that of non-interacting particles for a particle size commensurate with the period length of the cosine potential. For an open system coupled to particle reservoirs, we predict five different phases of non-equilibrium steady states to occur. Our results show that the particle size can be of crucial importance for non-equilibrium phase transitions in driven systems. Possible experiments for demonstrating our findings are pointed out.
Strong negative dependence properties have recently been proved for the symmetric exclusion process. In this paper, we apply these results to prove convergence to the Poisson and normal distributions for various functionals of the process.