Effective temperature in nonequilibrium steady states of Langevin systems with a tilted periodic potential

Abstract

We theoretically study Langevin systems with a tilted periodic potential. It has been known that the ratio $\Theta$ of the diffusion constant to the differential mobility is not equal to the temperature of the environment (multiplied by the Boltzmann constant), except in the linear response regime, where the fluctuation dissipation theorem holds. In order to elucidate the physical meaning of $\Theta$ far from equilibrium, we analyze a modulated system with a slowly varying potential. We derive a large scale description of the probability density for the modulated system by use of a perturbation method. The expressions we obtain show that $\Theta$ plays the role of the temperature in the large scale description of the system and that $\Theta$ can be determined directly in experiments, without measurements of the diffusion constant and the differential mobility.