Non-Equilibrium Work And Dissipation in Coarse-Grained Models

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Tanja Schilling
• Subject Area: Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 431945604

If one intends to coarse-grain the dynamics of a system that is out of thermal equilibrium, one needs to integrate out a non-stationary distribution of microstates. This implies that the entropycorresponding to this distribution will change with time, which in turn implies that there is a non-trivial contribution tothe heat dissipated during processes performed by the coarse-grained variable. The proposed project will focus onthis issue. Using a time-dependent projection operator formalism we will analyze the heat dissipated in a driven system. We will first tackle this problem from the fundamental point of view of theoretical physics and then apply our findings to several numerical test-cases: microrheology of a polymer melt, sliding friction of solids on solids and the dissociation of NaCl in water. Finally we will develop a scale-bridging tool for molecular dynamics simulation that takes non-stationary memory effects into account.This project is part of a research unit proposal. The research unit will study methods to reduce the complexity of non-equilibrium systems. We will apply the methods developed in our project to data from several other projects of this research unit.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5099: Reducing complexity of nonequilibrium systems
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Lars Pastewka