1202.4257 (Sanjib Sabhapandit)

Heat and work fluctuations for a harmonic oscillator    [PDF]

Sanjib Sabhapandit

The formalism of Kundu et al. [J. Stat. Mech. (2011) P03007], for computing
the large deviations of heat flow in harmonic systems, is applied to the case
of single Brownian particle in a harmonic trap and coupled to two heat baths at
different temperatures. The large-t form of the moment generating function
~ g(s) exp[t m(s)], of the total heat flow Q from one of the baths
to the particle in a given time interval t, is studied and exact explicit
expressions are obtained for both m(s) and g(s). For a special case of the
single particle problem that corresponds to the work done by an external
stochastic force on a harmonic oscillator coupled to a thermal bath, the
large-t form of the moment generating function is analyzed to obtain the exact
large deviation function as well as the complete asymptotic forms of the
probability density function of the work.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.4257