We study by simulation a mixture of active (run-and-tumble) and passive (Brownian) particles with repulsive exclusion interactions in one dimension, subject to a ratchet (smoothed sawtooth) potential. Such a potential is known to rectify active particles at one-body level, creating a net current in the ‘easy direction’. This is the direction in which one encounters the lower maximum force en route to the top of a potential barrier. The exclusion constraint results in single-file motion, so the mean velocities of active and passive particles are identical; we study the effects of activity level, Brownian diffusivity, particle size, initial sequence of active and passive particles, and active/passive concentration ratio on this mean velocity (i.e. the current per particle). We show that in some parameter regimes the sign of the current is reversed. This happens when the passive particles are at high temperature and so would cross barriers relatively easily, and without rectification, except that they collide with ‘cold’ active ones, which would otherwise be localized near the potential minima. In this case, the reversed current arises because hot passive particles push cold active ones preferentially in the direction with the lower spatial separation between the bottom and top of the barrier. A qualitatively similar mechanism operates in a mixture containing passive particles of two very different temperatures, although there is no quantitative mapping between that case and the systems studied here.
The recently developed extended local equilibrium approach to stochastic thermodynamics is applied to reactive systems. The properties of the fluctuating entropy and entropy production are analyzed for general linear and for prototypical nonlinear kinetic processes. It is shown that nonlinear kinetics typically induces deviations of the mean entropy production from its value in the deterministic (mean-field) limit. The probability distributions around the mean are derived and shown to qualitatively differ in thermodynamic equilibrium, under nonequilibrium conditions and in the vicinity of criticalities associated to the onset of multistability. In each case large deviation-type properties are shown to hold. The results are compared with those of alternative approaches developed in the literature.
The recently established connection between stochastic thermodynamics and fluctuating hydrodynamics is applied to a study of efficiencies in the coupled transport of heat and matter on a small scale. A stochastic model for a mesoscopic cell connected to two macroscopic reservoirs of heat and particles is developed, based on fluctuating hydrodynamics. Within this approach, the fluctuating separation and thermodynamic efficiencies are defined. The conditions required to observe bimodal distributions of these efficiencies are determined, and the evolution of these distributions is investigated in the large-size and in the long-time limits. The results obtained are not restricted to thermodiffusion and can be generalized to systems where efficiency is defined as a ratio of stochastic state variables or dissipation rates.
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