Temperature response in nonequilibrium stochastic systems

Abstract

The linear response to temperature changes is derived for systems with overdamped stochastic dynamics. Holding both in transient and steady state conditions, the results allow to compute nonequilibrium thermal susceptibilities from unperturbed correlation functions. These correlations contain a novel form of entropy flow due to temperature unbalances, next to the standard entropy flow of stochastic energetics and to complementary time-symmetric dynamical aspects. Our derivation hinges on a time rescaling, which is a key procedure for comparing apparently incommensurable path weights. An interesting notion of thermal time emerges from this approach.