Abstract
Standard thermodynamics pertains to a system in equilibrium. The meaning of equilibrium is that all fields such as temperature, pressure, magnetic, electric fields, etc., are held fixed, and the system is allowed sufficient time so that all dynamical variables, e.g., position, momentum, and their functions, remain constant in time, on the average. If any of the aforesaid fields is changed to another value, the system, in general, is expected to come to a new equilibrium after a time much longer than what is known as the ‘relaxation time’. Standard thermodynamics, however, does not touch upon the issue of the relaxation time or the time-evolution of the system. In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in nanoscience, especially in the context of biology and materials, wherein the systems of interest are so tiny that they are hardly ever in equilibrium. Therefore, there is a need to go beyond standard thermodynamics and treat fluctuating, time-dependent effects. Stochastic Thermodynamics is one such important development that is pedagogically reviewed in this article. Our treatment will be restricted to classical systems.
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Acknowledgement
The author is grateful to the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi for supporting his research work through their Senior Scientist Scheme.
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Sushanta Dattagupta, having spent more than forty years in teaching, research, and administration in various institutions and universities across India, is now a senior scientist of the Indian National Science Academy. He has written extensively, in journals and books, on topics of condensed matter, non-equilibrium phenomena, and more recently Tagore model of education. His current physics interests are in quantum dissipation and stochastic thermodynamics of nanoscopic systems.
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Dattagupta, S. Stochastic Thermodynamics. Reson 26, 1103–1123 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-021-1211-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-021-1211-3