IWNET12
IWNET12
Heat Dissipation and Self-consistent Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics
of Open Driven Systems
Hao Ge1
1 PKU, China
Abstract
Nonequilibrium thermodynamics of a system in a sustained environment with inux and eux is usually treated
as a subsystem of a large closed universe. It is still in doubt whether there could be a satisfactory nonequi-
librium thermodynamics of such an open driven system, which is solely established on its internal dynamics
without involving any details of the surrounding. We show here that the perspective of a real driven nonequilib-
rium steady-state (NESS) sustained by ideal external regenerating systems would accomplish this object. Using
the master-equation description of motor protein with and without regenerating systems as an example, we il-
lustrate that they have identical kinetics as well as the traditional Second Law with positive entropy production
rate. However, the concept of heat in the First Law is more subtle; still their dierence in heat dissipation is just
the minimum work that needed for the external energy regenerating system to keep the NESS (e.g., maintaining
constant concentrations of ATP, ADP and Pi). This interpretation makes the heat dissipation in the NESS
perspective be well dened from the equations of internal dynamics. Moreover, for systems approaching an
NESS, the non-negative rate of relative entropy change gives rise to the concept of housekeeping heat, which
is the ensemble averaged dierence between the NESS heat dissipation and NESS entropy change within each
transition. Hence this new perspective yields an extended Second Law, which emerges only from driven dynam-
ics with external regenerating system. Our theory shows consistency and contradistinctions in thermodynamics
of energy transduction and heat dissipation in the two dierent perspectives of nonequilibrium systems, a la
Clausius and Kelvin. Furthermore, it suggests new ingredients for the thermodynamics of self-organization in
driven systems.
E-mail: haoge@pku.edu.cn

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