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LIT-1892: Macroscopic stochastic thermodynamics

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StatusActive — read in part 2026-10-31 (NOTE-1472, Skimmed: §§I–III, IV.A–D, IV.G–H, VI, VII.A.1, VIII and appendix A read in full; field theory and two of three applications not read); worth reading as the systematic statement of how maintained nonequilibrium states behave at large size: a quasi-potential, not a free energy, sets their lifetimes, which dissipation along relaxation and escape paths brackets (THEORY-1264); each carries its own housekeeping dissipation; and Gaussian-noise Langevin models get both barriers and entropy production wrong (THEORY-1265).
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Tagsthermodynamics, natural-sciences
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1472 — Falasco & Esposito — macroscopic stochastic thermodynamics
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-1264 — Far from equilibrium, the weak-noise escape rate from an attractor goes as the exponential of minus system size times a barrier in the quasi-potential, not in any free energy, and that barrier is bracketed by thermodynamics: it is at most the entropy produced in relaxing from the saddle into the attractor and at least minus the entropy produced along the most likely escape path; the two bounds coincide at detailed balance and separate by twice the dissipation of the probability circulation, so far from equilibrium they can be very loose, THEORY-1265 — Approximating a chemical master equation by a Fokker–Planck or nonlinear Langevin equation gets the quasi-potential right only at the fixed points: between them it mis-estimates the barriers, so escape rates come out wrong by a factor exponential in system size and the approximation can pick the wrong one of two states as the long-run favourite, and its apparent entropy production vanishes at every steady state, missing the dissipation that sustains it, THEORY-1270 — Entropy production does not select which of several maintained steady states is the stable one: in the bistable Schlögl model the state the system occupies in the long run can carry either the higher or the lower deterministic entropy production rate, and the mean stochastic entropy production follows whichever state is more probable; in general the most dissipative attractor is the longest-lived only under special conditions, and lifetime tracks relaxation entropy only near detailed balance, THEORY-1273 — In a driven chemical system with two stable states and a finite number of molecules, each maintained state is metastable: it is left by fluctuation after a time exponential in system size, set by a barrier in a nonequilibrium quasi-potential that closes at the saddle-node, and the long-run share of time in each state is fixed by the parameters and system size, not by the initial condition; the deterministic rate equation, where the initial condition decides, holds only on times short of that escape time

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Falasco, G., & Esposito, M. (2025). Macroscopic stochastic thermodynamics. Reviews of Modern Physics, 97, 015002.

Read in part in NOTE-1472 (Skimmed; the parts on large deviations, metastability and escape, and dissipation read in full).

Why this is here

A14 cited it for the large-deviation account of escape from a maintained state, where a barrier and a system-size parameter set the lifetime. Read with Langer (LIT-1664) for metastable decay. The reading confirms that account and corrects one implication: the barrier is in a quasi-potential computed from the dynamics, not in a free energy, and dissipation only brackets it (THEORY-1264). For CASE-189 and CASE-111 it supplies the finite-size reading of a fold: a maintained regime is an attractor with its own steady dissipation, whose lifetime collapses as the barrier closes at the saddle-node. For the A14 analogy with SLT (THEORY-087) it supplies the disanalogy: the quasi-potential belongs to a dynamics with circulating currents and housekeeping dissipation, and a Bayesian posterior is the detailed-balance case, with neither. Against THEORY-671 it shows that entropy-production extremum principles hold only in special regimes (THEORY-1270).

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