Thermodynamics of a Brownian particle in a nonconfining potential

Brownian particles in periodic potentials: Coarse-graining versus fine structure

We study the motion of an overdamped particle connected to a thermal heat bath in the presence of an external periodic potential in one dimension. When we coarse-grain, i.e., bin the particle positions using bin sizes that are larger than the periodicity of the potential, the packet of spreading particles, all starting from a common origin, converges to a normal distribution centered at the origin with a mean-squared displacement that grows as 2D^{*}t, with an effective diffusion constant that is smaller than that of a freely diffusing particle. We examine the interplay between this coarse-grained description and the fine structure of the density, which is given by the Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG) factor e^{-V(x)/k_{B}T}, the latter being nonnormalizable. We explain this result and construct a theory of observables using the Fokker-Planck equation. These observables are classified as those that are related to the BG fine structure, like the energy or occupation times, while others, like the positional moments, for long times, converge to those of the large-scale description. Entropy falls into a special category as it has a coarse-grained and a fine structure description. The basic thermodynamic formula F=TS-E is extended to this far-from-equilibrium system. The ergodic properties are also studied using tools from infinite ergodic theory.

One-dimensional telegraphic process with noninstantaneous stochastic resetting

In this paper, we consider the one-dimensional dynamical evolution of a particle traveling at constant speed and performing, at a given rate, random reversals of the velocity direction. The particle is subject to stochastic resetting, meaning that at random times it is forced to return to the starting point. Here we consider a return mechanism governed by a deterministic law of motion, so that the time cost required to return is correlated to the position occupied at the time of the reset. We show that in such conditions the process reaches a stationary state which, for some kinds of deterministic return dynamics, is independent of the return phase. Furthermore, we investigate the first-passage properties of the system and provide explicit formulas for the mean first-hitting time. Our findings are supported by numerical simulations.

Transitions in the Ergodicity of Subrecoil-Laser-Cooled Gases

With subrecoil-laser-cooled atoms, one may reach nanokelvin temperatures while the ergodic properties of these systems do not follow usual statistical laws. Instead, due to an ingenious trapping mechanism in momentum space, power-law-distributed sojourn times are found for the cooled particles. Here, we show how this gives rise to a statistical-mechanical framework based on infinite ergodic theory, which replaces ordinary ergodic statistical physics of a thermal gas of atoms. In particular, the energy of the system exhibits a sharp discontinuous transition in its ergodic properties. Physically, this is controlled by the fluorescence rate, but, more profoundly, it is a manifestation of a transition for any observable, from being an integrable to becoming a nonintegrable observable, with respect to the infinite (non-normalized) invariant density.