Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 30, 2025

Unraveling Entropic Rate Acceleration Induced by Solvent Dynamics in Membrane Enzymes
Published on: January 16, 2016
Thermodynamic Efficiency of Interactions in Self-Organizing Systems
Ramil Nigmatullin1,2, Mikhail Prokopenko2
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
Abstract:
The emergence of global order in complex systems with locally interacting components is most striking at criticality, where small changes in control parameters result in a sudden global reorganization. We study the thermodynamic efficiency of interactions in self-organizing systems, which quantifies the change in the system's order per unit of work carried out on (or extracted from) the system. We analytically derive the thermodynamic efficiency of interactions for the case of quasi-static variations of control parameters in the exactly solvable Curie-Weiss (fully connected) Ising model, and demonstrate that this quantity diverges at the critical point of a second-order phase transition. This divergence is shown for quasi-static perturbations in both control parameters-the external field and the coupling strength. Our analysis formalizes an intuitive understanding of thermodynamic efficiency across diverse self-organizing dynamics in physical, biological, and social domains.
Related Concept Videos
Thermodynamic Systems
Consider an example of tea boiling in a kettle. The...
Second Law of Thermodynamics
Second Law of Thermodynamics
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
Entropy within the Cell
Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
The relation between entropy and disorder can be illustrated with the example of the phase change of ice to water. In ice, the molecules are located at specific sites giving a solid state, whereas, in a liquid form, these molecules are much freer to move. The molecular arrangement has therefore become more randomized. Although the change in average...

