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Updated: Aug 5, 2026

Unraveling Entropic Rate Acceleration Induced by Solvent Dynamics in Membrane Enzymes
Published on: January 16, 2016
Entropy production, fractals, and relaxation to equilibrium
1Department of Physics and Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
Abstract:
The theory of entropy production in nonequilibrium, Hamiltonian systems, previously described for steady states using partitions of phase space, is here extended to time dependent systems relaxing to equilibrium. We illustrate the main ideas by using a simple multibaker model, with some nonequilibrium initial state, and we study its progress toward equilibrium. The central results are (i) the entropy production is governed by an underlying, exponentially decaying fractal structure in phase space, (ii) the rate of entropy production is largely independent of the scale of resolution used in the partitions, and (iii) the rate of entropy production is in agreement with the predictions of nonequilibrium thermodynamics.
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