Brownian duet: A novel tale of thermodynamic efficiency

TL;DR

This paper analytically investigates the thermodynamic properties of a Brownian engine driven by two periodic forces, exploring efficiency, power, and entropy production, with experimental validation on colloidal systems.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analytical framework for stochastic thermodynamics of a duo-driven Brownian engine, including experimental verification.

Findings

Analytical expressions for Onsager coefficients and stochastic work.

Verification of efficiency and dissipation relations.

Experimental confirmation on colloidal systems.

Abstract

We calculate analytically the stochastic thermodynamic properties of an isothermal Brownian engine driven by a duo of time-periodic forces, including its Onsager coefficients, the stochastic work of each force, and the corresponding stochastic entropy production. We verify the relations between different operational regimes, maximum power, maximum efficiency and minimum dissipation, and reproduce the signature features of the stochastic efficiency. All these results are experimentally tested without adjustable parameters on a colloidal system.