Special Colloquium

Massimiliano Esposito, Luxembourg

"Thermodynamics for small devices: From fluctuation relations to stochastic efficiencies"

4:00pm, RLM 11.204

Abstract: Recent developments in experimental techniques significantly improved our ability to build and manipulate small nanoscale devices. As any macroscopic device, they require energy to function and optimizing their performance is technologically very important. Due to their small scale, they are subjected to strong fluctuations, quantum effects, and typically operate far from equilibrium. I will present a theory, called stochastic thermodynamics, which provides a general nonequilibrium thermodynamic description of these small devices. I will use it to show that nonequilibrium fluctuations in small devices obey universal properties which have important implications for the finite-time performance of small energy converts such as thermoelectric quantum junctions or molecular motors.