Thermodynamic selection: mechanisms and scenarios

TL;DR

This paper explores thermodynamic competition among agents modeled as heat engines, analyzing how different strategies and resource constraints influence efficiency and work extraction, with implications for biological and ecological systems.

Contribution

It introduces a framework linking thermodynamics, game theory, and ecology to analyze agent competition and adaptation in energy extraction scenarios.

Findings

Efficiency varies with resource availability and strategy choice.

Game-theoretical concepts like the prisoner's dilemma emerge from thermodynamic interactions.

Adaptation enhances the efficiency of work-extraction mechanisms.

Abstract

Thermodynamic selection is an indirect competition between agents feeding on the same energy resource and obeying the laws of thermodynamics. We examine scenarios of this selection, where the agent is modeled as a heat-engine coupled to two thermal baths and extracting work from the high-temperature bath. The agents can apply different work-extracting, game-theoretical strategies, e.g. the maximum power or the maximum efficiency. They can also have a fixed structure or be adaptive. Depending on whether the resource (i.e. the high-temperature bath) is infinite or finite, the fitness of the agent relates to the work-power or the total extracted work. These two selection scenarios lead to increasing or decreasing efficiencies of the work-extraction, respectively. The scenarios are illustrated via plant competition for sunlight, and the competition between different ATP production pathways. We also show that certain general concepts of game-theory and ecology--the prisoner's dilemma and the maximal power principle--emerge from the thermodynamics of competing agents. We emphasize the role of adaptation in developing efficient work-extraction mechanisms.