The stochastic thermodynamics of a rotating Brownian particle in a gradient flow

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the entropy production of a Brownian particle in a flow, revealing how environmental interactions and temperature gradients influence thermodynamic behavior at the mesoscopic level.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed stochastic thermodynamics framework for a rotating Brownian particle in flow with temperature gradients, highlighting new nonlinear interaction effects.

Findings

Entropy production aligns with classical near-equilibrium predictions.

Temperature gradients introduce additional nonlinear terms.

The analysis is valid in the advection-dissipation limit with specific flow parameters.

Abstract

We compute the entropy production engendered in the environment from a single Brownian particle which moves in a mean flow, and show that it corresponds in expectation to classical near-equilibrium entropy production in the surrounding fluid with specific mesoscopic transport coefficients. With temperature gradient, extra terms are found which results from the nonlinear interaction between the particle and the non-equilibrated environment. The calculations are carried out in the multi-time formalism and in the advection-dissipation limit where the Stokes number (St) of the flow tends to zero and the Peclet number (Pe) diverges but the combination St times Pe remains constant.