Stochastic Thermodynamics on Time-Evolving Curved Spaces

Abstract

We construct stochastic thermodynamics of overdamped Langevin systems on nonrelaticvistic curved spaces with time-dependent metrics. The time dependence of the metric contributes to the energy balance by performing work on the kinetic energy, which is instantaneously dissipated as heat in the overdamped regime. This contribution makes our framework thermodynamically consistent so that entropy production satisfies the second law of thermodynamics. As a special case, when the metric evolves according to backward Ricci flow, the entropy balance exhibits a structure similar to Perelman's entropy functional. Our framework provides a way to quantify thermodynamic costs in dynamics on time-evolving spaces such as diffusion on membranes.