For the flux of a vector order parameter, microscopic reversibility requires independent Gaussian white noise components with covarianceThe current changes sign under time reversal. The resulting path-probability ratio contributes to its logarithm; integration by parts converts this to the free-energy loss from the conserved dynamics.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 344 2 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Write and . Eliminating the noise gives . The Onsager--Machlup path probability is thereforeThese are conditional path densities given the corresponding starting configuration. For a time-even vector order parameter, reversal reads the configurations backward, changes to , and keeps unchanged on each corresponding configuration.
The two Gaussian white noise measures have the same normalization. With a common midpoint discretization, the noise-to-path Jacobian also agrees under reversal by time-reversal invariance of a path Jacobian. The common factor may include that path-dependent Jacobian; it need not be a universal constant. This makes the shared-factor assertion precise while leaving the requested ratio unaffected.