Absolute Negative Mobility: can it take place in thermal equilibrium?

Statistical Physics and Complexity Group meeting

Absolute Negative Mobility: can it take place in thermal equilibrium?

  • Event time: 11:30am until 12:30pm
  • Event date: 8th July 2020
  • Speaker: David Mukamel (Department of Physics of Complex Systems Weizmann Institute of Science Israel)
  • Location: Online - see email.

Event details

Absolute Negative Mobility (ANM) is a phenomenon whereby current in a stationary system  is  in a direction opposite to the driving field. Naïve argument suggests that ANM cannot take place in systems in thermal equilibrium as this could lead to a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Thus numerous previous theoretical and experimental studies of ANM have dealt with the response to a driving field in nonequilibrium  steady states. In this talk a simple lattice model of a driven tracer is introduced and demonstrated to exhibit ANM in equilibrium, with no violation of the basic laws of thermodynamics.  The limits of validity of the naïve argument are elucidated and the entropy production which accompany the motion of the tracer is calculated.