The Second Law For the Transitions Between the Non-equilibrium Steady States

TL;DR

This paper establishes a universal relation for entropy change during transitions between non-equilibrium steady states, linking it to relative entropy and dissipation relations, applicable far from equilibrium.

Contribution

It introduces a general expression for entropy change between non-equilibrium steady states based on relative entropy, extending existing dissipation relations to far-from-equilibrium processes.

Findings

Entropy change equals the relative entropy of steady state distributions.

The relation generalizes previous dissipation relations to arbitrary far-from-equilibrium transitions.

Connects entropy change with established fluctuation theorems.

Abstract

We show that the system entropy change for the transitions between non-equilibrium steady states arbitrarily far from equilibrium for any constituting process is given by the relative entropy of the distributions of these steady states. This expression is then shown to relate to the dissipation relations of both Vaikuntanathan and Jarzynski [EPL 87, 60005 (2009)] and Kawai, Parrondo and Van den Broeck [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 080602 (2007)] in the case of energy-conserving driving.