A relation giving a minimum for the irreversible work in quasi-equilibrium processes was derived by Sekimoto et al. [K. Sekimoto, S. Sasa, J. Phys. Soc. Japan 66 (1997) 3326] in the framework of stochastic energetics. This relation can also be written as a type of “uncertainty principle” in...

In the present work, we analyze the global stability of a heat engine working at maximum power regime. We use the Lyapunov stability theory to construct the Lyapunov function to prove the asymptotic stability behavior about the steady-state of intermediate temperatures in the engine model. Our...

This study introduces the constrained forms of the Shannon information entropy and Kullback–Leibler cross-entropy functions. Applicable to a closed system, these functions incorporate the constraints on the system in a generic fashion, irrespective of the form or even the number of the...

In the last 10 years, a number of “conventional fluctuation theorems” have been derived for systems with deterministic or stochastic dynamics, in a transient or in a non-equilibrium stationary state. These theorems gave explicit expressions for the ratio of the probability to find the system...

In the protein folding problem, solvent-mediated forces are commonly represented by intra-chain pairwise contact energy. Although this approximation has proven to be useful in several circumstances, it is limited in some other aspects of the problem. Here we show that it is possible to achieve...