A unified picture of strong coupling stochastic thermodynamics and time reversals

Abstract

Strong-coupling statistical thermodynamics is formulated as Hamiltonian dynamics of an observed system interacting with another unobserved system (a bath). It is shown that the entropy production functional of stochastic thermodynamics, defined as the log-ratio of forward and backward system path probabilities, is in one-to-one relation with the log-ratios of joint initial conditions of the system and the bath. A version of strong-coupling statistical thermodynamics where the system-bath interaction vanishes at the beginning and the end of a process is, as is also weak-coupling stochastic thermodynamics, related the bath initially in equilibrium by itself. The heat is then the change of bath energy over the process. It is discussed when this heat is a functional of system history alone. The version of strong-coupling statistical thermodynamics introduced by Seifert and Jarzynski is related to the bath initially in conditional equilibrium with respect to the system. This leads to heat as another functional of system history which needs to be determined by thermodynamic integration. The log-ratio of forward and backward system path probabilities in a stochastic process is finally related to log-ratios of initial conditions of a combined system and bath. It is shown that the entropy production formulas of stochastic processes under general class of time reversals are given by change of a bath energy in a larger underlying Hamiltonian system. The paper highlights the centrality of time reversal in stochastic thermodynamics, also in the case of strong coupling.