Work relations for a system governed by Tsallis statistics

Abstract

We derive analogues of the Jarzynski equality and Crooks relation to characterise the nonequilibrium work associated with changes in the spring constant of an overdamped oscillator in a quadratically varying spatial temperature profile. The stationary state of such an oscillator is described by Tsallis statistics, and the work relations for certain processes may be expressed in terms of q-exponentials. We suggest that these identities might be a feature of nonequilibrium processes in circumstances where Tsallis distributions are found.