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Fluctuation relations in active medium:


A colloidal particle immersed in a bath of bacteria is a typical example of a passive particle in an active bath. To model this, we take an overdamped harmonically trapped particle subjected to a thermal and a non-equilibrium noise arising from the active bath. The harmonic well can be attributed to a laser trap or to the small amplitude motion of the sedimented colloid at the bottom of the capillary. In the long time, the system reaches a non-equilibrium steady state that can be described by an effective temperature. Here we investigate whether fluctuation relations for entropy hold in the presence of Gaussian active noise. In addition, when subjected to a deterministic time dependent drag, we find that transient fluctuation theorem for work cannot be applied in conventional form. However, a steady state fluctuation relation for work emerges out with a renormalized temperature. More recently we have quantified the entropy production in active bath in terms of a time dependent active temperature of the medium.

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Relevant Publications:

1.  Effects of active fluctuations on energetics of a colloidal particle: superdiffusion, dissipation and entropy production - Subhasish Chaki and Rajarshi Chakrabarti, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 530, 121574 (2019).

2. Entropy production and work fluctuation relations for a single particle in active bath - Subhasish Chaki and Rajarshi Chakrabarti, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 511, 302 (2018).

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