Stochastic thermodynamics

Eighteen-month postdoctoral position at the Laboratoire de Physique of ENS de Lyon on the thermodynamics of micromechanical resonators interacting with a thermal bath and an external control potential such as an electrostatic force. Within stochastic thermodynamics, the work will quantify energy exchanges (work and heat), understand how the resonator’s temperature evolves, and interpret the role of information when the system is under feedback, with both theoretical and experimental components. Main tasks are optimising the real-time feedback coupling between resonator and external force, meas

The second law of thermodynamics is a fundamental but phenomenological bound on systems moving between equilibrium states, and equilibrium statistical physics describes many-particle systems in thermal equilibrium with great generality. Out of equilibrium, the second law in its form of non-negative entropy change no longer holds in general, yet comparably fundamental bounds appear to constrain non-equilibrium behaviour. Such bounds are formulated within stochastic thermodynamics, which - under certain assumptions - offers a general theory for small out-of-equilibrium systems and extends equili