Work distribution in thermal processes

TL;DR

This paper derives a general expression for the moment generating function of work in nonequilibrium thermal processes, enabling analysis of diverse systems and comparison with simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to compute the work mgf in open systems undergoing thermal processes using a temperature-like scalar satisfying an ODE.

Findings

Derived explicit mgf expressions for various systems

Validated results with Monte Carlo simulations

Demonstrated applicability to different timescales

Abstract

We find the moment generating function (mgf) of the nonequilibrium work for open systems undergoing a thermal process, ie, when the stochastic dynamics maps thermal states into time dependent thermal states. The mgf is given in terms of a temperature-like scalar satisfying a first order ODE. We apply the result to some paradigmatic situations: a levitated nanoparticle in a breathing optical trap, a brownian particle in a box with a moving piston and a two state system driven by an external field, where the work mgfs are obtained for different timescales and compared with Monte Carlo simulations.