Dissipation bounds precision of current response to kinetic perturbations

Abstract

The precision of currents in Markov networks is bounded by dissipation via the so-called thermodynamic uncertainty relation (TUR). In our work, we demonstrate a similar inequality that bounds the precision of the static current response to perturbations of kinetic barriers. Perturbations of such type, which affect only the system kinetics but not the thermodynamic forces, are highly important in biochemistry and nanoelectronics. We prove that our inequality cannot be derived from the standard TUR. Instead, it implies the standard TUR and provides an even tighter bound for dissipation. We also provide a procedure for obtaining the optimal response precision for a given model.