The "footprints'' of irreversibility

TL;DR

This paper reformulates entropy production in terms of trajectory relative entropy, identifying key path variables for irreversibility and deriving entropy production for stochastic systems, linking work and irreversibility measures.

Contribution

It introduces a new formulation of entropy production using relative entropy of trajectories and identifies sufficient path variables for irreversibility.

Findings

Work saturates the relative entropy of trajectories.

Derived entropy production for stochastic systems.

Identified key path variables for irreversibility.

Abstract

We reformulate the result for the entropy production given in Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 080602 (2007) in terms of the relative entropy of microscopic trajectories. By a combination with the Crook's theorem, we identify the path variables that are sufficient to fully identify irreversibility. We show that work saturates the relative entropy, and derive the entropy production for stochastic descriptions.