Stochastic paths controlling speed and dissipation

Abstract

Near equilibrium, thermodynamic intuition suggests that fast, irreversible processes will dissipate more energy and entropy than slow, quasistatic processes connecting the same initial and final states. Here, we test the hypothesis that this relationship between speed and dissipation holds for stochastic processes far from equilibrium. To analyze these processes on finite timescales, we derive an exact expression for the path probabilities of continuous-time Markov chains from the path summation solution of the master equation. Applying this formula to a model for nonequilibrium self-assembly, we show that more speed can lead to less dissipation when there are strong nonequilibrium currents. In the model, the relative energies of the initial and target states control the speed, and the nonequilibrium currents of a cycle situated between these states control the path-level dissipation. This model serves as a minimal prototype for designing kinetics to sculpt the nonequilibrium path space, so that faster structure-forming paths dissipate less.