Entropy production of the contact model

Abstract

We propose an expression for the production of entropy for system described by a stochastic dynamics which is appropriate for the case where the reverse transition rate vanishes but the forward transition is nonzero. The expression is positive defined and based on the inequality $x\ln x-(x-1)\ge0$. The corresponding entropy flux is linear in the probability distribution allowing its calculation as an average. The expression is applied to the one-dimensional contact process at the stationary state. We found that the rate of entropy production per site is finite with a singularity at the critical point with diverging slope.