Heat leakage in overdamped harmonic systems.

Area of Science:

• Thermodynamics
• Statistical Mechanics
• Non-equilibrium Physics

Background:

• Brownian systems are fundamental models in statistical mechanics.
• Understanding heat exchange in non-equilibrium systems is crucial.
• Overdamped approximations simplify analyses but may lack accuracy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate heat leakage in overdamped nonequilibrium Brownian harmonic systems.
• To compute stochastic heats exchanged with the bath under sudden parameter changes.
• To identify limitations of the overdamped approximation.

Main Methods:

• Exact computation of underdamped and overdamped stochastic heats.
• Analysis of sudden frequency or temperature switches.
• Microscopic derivation of heat leakage origins.

Main Results:

• Underdamped heat matches overdamped in the large friction limit for isothermal processes.
• This equivalence breaks down for isochoric transformations.
• Additional heat leakage originates from initial velocity relaxation.

Conclusions:

• The overdamped approximation has limitations for stochastic heat evaluation.
• Changing bath temperatures require careful consideration beyond simple overdamped models.
• Initial velocity dynamics significantly impact heat leakage in isochoric processes.