Entropy production in active Rouse polymers

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical model to quantify entropy production in active Rouse polymers, revealing how activity and thermal baths influence their nonequilibrium behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analytical approach to calculate entropy production in active polymers modeled as active Rouse chains with Ornstein-Uhlenbeck beads.

Findings

Entropy production is zero for passive Rouse polymers.

Active polymers without thermal bath have zero entropy production.

Presence of thermal bath leads to nonzero entropy production.

Abstract

Active polymers are the archetype of nonequilibrium viscoelastic systems that constantly consume energy to produce motion. The activity of many biopolymers is essential to many life processes. The entropy production rate quantifies their nonequilibrium nature through the breaking of the time reversal symmetry. In this work we build an analytical model of active polymers as active Rouse polymers where the beads are active Ornstein Uhlenbeck particles and calculate their entropy production. The interactions between the beads are decoupled through the normal mode analysis and the entropy production can be solved analytically. We obtain the contribution of each Rouse mode in the entropy production and the dependence of the entropy production on the polymer properties like length. We find that the entropy production is zero for a passive Rouse polymer in the presence of thermal bath as well as for an active Rouse polymer in the absence of thermal bath. For an active chain in the presence of a thermal bath the entropy production is nonzero. In this case we find that the local temporal entropy production dominates the nonlocal entropy production.