We characterize statistical properties of the flow field in developed turbulence using concepts from stochastic thermodynamics. On the basis of data from a free air-jet experiment, we demonstrate how the dynamic fluctuations induced by small-scale in
termittency generate analogs of entropy-consuming trajectories with sufficient weight to make fluctuation theorems observable at the macroscopic scale. We propose an integral fluctuation theorem for the entropy production associated with the stochastic evolution of velocity increments along the eddy-hierarchy and demonstrate its extreme sensitivity to the accurate description of the tails of the velocity distributions.
The asymptotic tails of the probability distributions of thermodynamic quantities convey important information about the physics of nanoscopic systems driven out of equilibrium. We apply a recently proposed method to analytically determine the asympt
otics of work distributions in Langevin systems to an one-dimensional model of single-molecule force spectroscopy. The results are in excellent agreement with numerical simulations, even in the centre of the distributions. We compare our findings with a recent proposal for an universal form of the asymptotics of work distributions in single-molecule experiments.
We determine the complete asymptotic behaviour of the work distribution in driven stochastic systems described by Langevin equations. Special emphasis is put on the calculation of the pre-exponential factor which makes the result free of adjustable p
arameters. The method is applied to various examples and excellent agreement with numerical simulations is demonstrated. For the special case of parabolic potentials with time-dependent frequencies, we derive a universal functional form for the asymptotic work distribution.
