Scaling behavior of nonequilibrium measures in internally driven elastic assemblies

Area of Science:

• Statistical Mechanics
• Active Matter Physics
• Biophysics

Background:

• Understanding internally driven assemblies like active matter and living systems requires detecting nonequilibrium activity.
• Current methods for measuring nonequilibrium behavior can be invasive or lack detailed insights.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a noninvasive approach for measuring nonequilibrium behavior by analyzing the breaking of detailed balance.
• To introduce and validate the use of 'cycling frequencies' as a key metric for nonequilibrium activity.

Main Methods:

• Focusing on 'cycling frequencies,' which measure the average revolution rate of trajectories in phase space for pairs of degrees of freedom.
• Connecting cycling frequencies to other nonequilibrium measures like area enclosing rate and entropy production rate.
• Testing the approach on toy models of elastic networks in viscous fluid with site-dependent driving.

Main Results:

• Demonstrating numerically and analytically that cycling frequencies follow a power law with respect to the distance between degrees of freedom.
• Showing that cycling frequencies contain information about system dimensionality and active noise amplitude.
• Establishing a framework for predicting two-point nonequilibrium measures based on activity distribution.

Conclusions:

• The developed method provides a noninvasive and informative way to quantify nonequilibrium activity.
• Cycling frequencies serve as a powerful tool for characterizing complex active systems.
• The analytical framework facilitates predictions of system behavior based on internal driving.