Dynamical fluctuations for periodically driven diffusions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the large deviation properties of overdamped diffusion processes under periodic driving forces, extending the concept of traffic to time-dependent regimes and exploring their thermodynamic implications.

Contribution

It introduces the extension of the traffic concept to periodically driven systems and analyzes fluctuation functionals of occupations and currents in this context.

Findings

Extended traffic concept to time-periodic forces

Derived fluctuation functionals for occupations and currents

Connected fluctuation functionals to thermodynamic potentials

Abstract

We study dynamical fluctuations in overdamped diffusion processes driven by time periodic forces. This is done by studying fluctuation functionals (rate functions from large deviation theory), of fluctuations around the non-equilibrium steady regime. We identify a concept called traffic. This traffic, which was introduced in the context of non-equilibrium steady state statistics, is extended here for time-dependent but periodic forces. We discuss the fluctuation functionals of occupations and currents, and work out some specific examples. The connection between these and non-equilibrium thermodynamic potentials, their corresponding variational principles and their Legendre transforms, are also discussed.