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Published on: December 4, 2017
Thermodynamic large fluctuations from uniformized dynamics
1Department of Neurobiology and Kavli Institute for Neuroscience, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06510, USA.
Abstract:
Large fluctuations have received considerable attention as they encode information on the fine-scale dynamics. Large deviation relations known as fluctuation theorems also capture crucial nonequilibrium thermodynamical properties. Here we report that, using the technique of uniformization, the thermodynamic large deviation functions of continuous-time Markov processes can be obtained from Markov chains evolving in discrete time. This formulation offers theoretical and numerical approaches to explore large deviation properties. In particular, the time evolution of autonomous and nonautonomous processes can be expressed in terms of a single Poisson rate. In this way the uniformization procedure leads to a simple and efficient way to simulate stochastic trajectories that reproduce the exact fluxes statistics. We illustrate the formalism for the current fluctuations in a stochastic pump model.
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