Fluctuations of energy flux in a simple dissipative out-of-equilibrium system

TL;DR

This study investigates the statistical behavior of energy flux fluctuations in a simple electronic dissipative system, revealing asymmetric distributions and deviations from fluctuation theorem predictions, with implications for complex out-of-equilibrium systems.

Contribution

It provides experimental insights into energy flux fluctuations in a simple dissipative system, highlighting features relevant to more complex out-of-equilibrium phenomena.

Findings

Energy flux distribution has a cusp near zero and asymmetric exponential tails.

Large power fluctuations do not satisfy the Fluctuation Theorem.

The system's behavior mimics features of complex dissipative systems like granular gases.

Abstract

We report the statistical properties of the fluctuations of the energy flux in an electronic RC circuit driven with a stochastic voltage. The fluctuations of the power injected in the circuit are measured as a function of the damping rate and the forcing parameters. We show that its distribution exhibits a cusp close to zero and two asymmetric exponential tails, the asymmetry being driven by the mean dissipation. This simple experiment allows to capture the qualitative features of the energy flux distribution observed in more complex dissipative systems. We also show that the large fluctuations of injected power averaged on a time lag do not verify the Fluctuation Theorem even for long averaging time. This is in contrast with the findings of previous experiments due to their small range of explored fluctuation amplitude. The injected power in a system of N components either correlated or not is also studied to mimic systems with large number of particles, such as in a dilute granular gas.