Gingrich TR, Rotskoff GM, Crooks GE, Geissler PL. Near-optimal protocols in complex nonequilibrium transformations.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2016;
113:10263-8. [PMID:
27573816 PMCID:
PMC5027427 DOI:
10.1073/pnas.1606273113]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The development of sophisticated experimental means to control nanoscale systems has motivated efforts to design driving protocols that minimize the energy dissipated to the environment. Computational models are a crucial tool in this practical challenge. We describe a general method for sampling an ensemble of finite-time, nonequilibrium protocols biased toward a low average dissipation. We show that this scheme can be carried out very efficiently in several limiting cases. As an application, we sample the ensemble of low-dissipation protocols that invert the magnetization of a 2D Ising model and explore how the diversity of the protocols varies in response to constraints on the average dissipation. In this example, we find that there is a large set of protocols with average dissipation close to the optimal value, which we argue is a general phenomenon.
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