Experimental Test of a New Equality: Measuring Heat Dissipation in an Optically Driven Colloidal System

TL;DR

This paper experimentally tests a recently derived equality linking energy dissipation to measurable quantities in a nonequilibrium colloidal system, validating the theoretical relation in a real-world setting.

Contribution

First experimental validation of the Harada-Sasa equality in an optically driven colloidal system, demonstrating its practical applicability.

Findings

Equality is validated to a good extent

Irreversible work can be estimated from accessible measurements

Supports the use of the relation in small nonequilibrium systems

Abstract

Measurement of energy dissipation in small nonequilibrium systems is generally a difficult task. Recently, Harada and Sasa [Phys.Rev.Lett. 95, 130602(2005)] derived an equality relating the energy dissipation rate to experimentally accessible quantities in nonequilibrium steady states described by the Langevin equation. Here, we show the first experimental test of this new relation in an optically driven colloidal system. We find that this equality is validated to a fairly good extent, thus the irreversible work of a small system is estimated from readily obtainable quantities.