Universal bounds on entropy production from fluctuating coarse-grained trajectories

TL;DR

This paper reviews methods to estimate entropy production in non-equilibrium systems from coarse-grained data, focusing on model-free inequalities applicable under Markovian assumptions, with implications for experimental and theoretical studies.

Contribution

It systematically reviews and discusses bounds on entropy production derived from coarse-grained observations under Markovian dynamics, including steady and time-dependent systems.

Findings

Provides a comprehensive overview of existing inequalities for entropy production estimation.

Highlights extensions to time-dependent and relaxing systems.

Summarizes progress in quantifying entropy production along individual trajectories.

Abstract

Entropy production is arguably the most universally applicable measure of non-equilibrium behavior, particularly for systems coupled to a heat bath. This setting encompasses driven soft matter as well as biomolecular, biochemical, and biophysical systems. Despite its central role, direct measurements of entropy production remain challenging - especially in small systems dominated by fluctuations. The main difficulty arises because not all degrees of freedom contributing to entropy production are experimentally accessible. A key question, therefore, is how to infer entropy production from coarse-grained observations, such as time series of experimentally measurable variables. Over the past decade, stochastic thermodynamics has provided several inequalities that yield model-free lower bounds on entropy production from such coarse-grained data. The major approaches rely on observations of coarse-grained states, fluctuating currents or ticks, correlation functions of coarse-grained observables, and waiting-time distributions between so-called Markovian events, which correspond to transitions between mesoscopic states. Here, we systematically review these techniques valid under the sole assumption of a Markovian, i.e., memoryless, dynamics on an underlying, not necessarily observable, network of states or following a possibly high-dimensional Langevin equation. We discuss in detail the large class of non-equilibrium steady states and highlight extensions of these methods to time-dependent and relaxing systems. While our focus is on mean entropy production, we also summarize recent progress in quantifying entropy production along individual coarse-grained trajectories.