Unified thermodynamic-kinetic uncertainty relation

Abstract

Understanding current fluctuations is of fundamental importance and paves the way for the development of practical applications. According to the thermodynamic and kinetic uncertainty relations, the precision of currents can be constrained solely by total entropy production or dynamical activity. In this study, we derive a tighter bound on the precision of currents in terms of both thermodynamic and kinetic quantities, demonstrating that these quantities jointly constrain current fluctuations. The thermodynamic and kinetic uncertainty relations become particular cases of our result in asymptotic limits. Intriguingly, the unified thermodynamic-kinetic uncertainty relation leads to a tighter classical speed limit, refining the time constraint on the system's state transformation. The proposed framework can be extended to apply to state observables and systems with unidirectional transitions, thereby providing a constraint on the precision of the first-passage time.