1202.5053 (Guy Bunin et al.)

Dynamics of Energy Fluctuations in Equilibrating and Driven-Dissipative
Systems    [PDF]

Guy Bunin, Yariv Kafri

When two isolated system are brought in contact, they relax to equilibrium
via energy exchange. In another setting, when one of the systems is driven and
the other is large, the first system reaches a steady-state which is not
described by the Gibbs distribution. Here, we derive expressions for the size
of energy fluctuations as a function of time in both settings, assuming that
the process is composed of many small steps of energy exchange. In both cases
the results depend only on the average energy flows in the system, independent
of any other microscopic detail. In the steady-state we also derive an
expression relating three key properties: the relaxation time of the system,
the energy injection rate, and the size of the fluctuations.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.5053