Thermodynamic Skewness Relation From Detailed Fluctuation Theorem

Abstract

The detailed fluctuation theorem (DFT) is a statement about the asymmetry in the statistics of the entropy production. Consequences of the DFT are the second law of thermodynamics and the thermodynamics uncertainty relation (TUR), which translate into lower bounds for the mean and variance of currents, respectively. However, far from equilibrium, mean and variance are not enough to characterize the underlying distribution of the entropy production. The fluctuations are not necessarily Gaussian (nor symmetric), which means its skewness could be nonzero. We prove that the DFT imposes a negative tight lower bound for the skewness of the entropy production as a function of the mean. As application, we check the bound in the heat exchange problem between two thermal reservoirs mediated by a qubit swap engine.