Feedback Control of Waiting Times

Abstract

Feedback loops are known as a versatile tool for controlling transport in small systems, which usually have large intrinsic fluctuations. Here we investigate the control of a temporal correlation function, the waiting time distribution, under active and passive feedback conditions. We develop a general formalism and then specify to the simple unidirectional transport model, where we compare costs of open loop and feedback control and use methods from optimal control theory to optimize waiting time distributions.