Bounds on current fluctuations in periodically driven systems

Understand

Small nonequilibrium systems in contact with a heat bath can be analyzed with the framework of stochastic thermodynamics.

• In such systems, fluctuations, which are not negligible, follow universal relations such as the fluctuation theorem.
• More recently, it has been found that, for nonequilibrium stationary states, the full spectrum of fluctuations of any thermodynamic current is bounded by the average rate of entropy production and the average current.
• However, this bound does not apply to periodically driven systems, such as heat engines driven by periodic variation of the temperature and artificial molecular pumps driven by an external protocol.