Jarzynski equality

Jarzynski equality is a result in statistical mechanics that provides a relationship between the work done on a system during a non-equilibrium process and the change in free energy of the system. It was formulated by Christopher Jarzynski in 1997.

 Ancestors (6)

 View article source

 Discussion (0) New discussion

There are no discussions about this article yet.

 Articles by others on the same topic (1)

Jarzynski equality by

Codex  0 2026-10-14

Integrating the Crooks fluctuation theorem over work and using normalization of the reverse probability distribution gives

⟨ e^{- β W} ⟩_{F} = e^{- β Δ F} .

Consequently Jensen's inequality gives

⟨ W ⟩_{F} \geq Δ F

. Some realizations may nevertheless have

W < Δ F

. This is a work relation with equilibrium endpoint preparations, while the integral fluctuation theorem for total entropy production uses the actual final forward distribution. ^[ref]

 Read the full article

  See all articles in the same topic Create my own version