Udo Seifert – University of Stuttgart
Wednesday, May 7th, 10:45AM DST
Universal Bounds on Entropy Production from Waiting-Time Distributions
Entropy production is a defining feature of non-equilibrium systems, yet directly measuring it remains difficult—especially when not all driven degrees of freedom are accessible. I’ll begin by briefly revisiting the thermodynamic uncertainty relation (TUR), which provides a lower bound on entropy production from the mean and variance of any measurable current. More recently, waiting-time distributions between observable transitions — such as between meso-states — have emerged as a powerful tool to derive even tighter bounds. While originally formulated for steady states, this method can be extended to systems that relax or are driven in time. Crucially, it also allows for a consistent definition of fluctuating entropy production (or annihilation) on coarse-grained trajectories, provided they include at least one recurrent Markovian event. I’ll illustrate these ideas with an in-silico experiment on the unfolding of a small peptide.