{
  "id": "1310.5518",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2013-10-21T12:10:20.000Z",
  "updated": "2013-10-21T12:10:20.000Z",
  "title": "Universal features in the energetics of symmetry breaking",
  "authors": [
    "Edgar Roldan",
    "Ignacio A Martinez",
    "Juan MR Parrondo",
    "Dmitri Petrov"
  ],
  "comment": "7 pages, 3 figures",
  "categories": [
    "cond-mat.stat-mech"
  ],
  "abstract": "A symmetry breaking (SB) involves an abrupt change in the set of microstates that a system can explore. This change has unavoidable thermodynamic implications. According to Boltzmann's microscopic interpretation of entropy, a shrinkage of the set of compatible states implies a decrease of entropy, which eventually needs to be compensated by dissipation of heat and consequently requires work. Examples are the compression of a gas and the erasure of information. On the other hand, in a spontaneous SB, the available phase space volume changes without the need for work, yielding an apparent decrease of entropy. Here we show that this decrease of entropy is a key ingredient in the Szilard engine and Landauer's principle and report on a direct measurement of the entropy change along SB transitions in a Brownian particle. The SB is induced by a bistable potential created with two optical traps. The experiment confirms theoretical results based on fluctuation theorems, allows us to reproduce the Szilard engine extracting energy from a single thermal bath, and shows that the signature of a SB in the energetics is measurable, providing new methods to detect, for example, the coexistence of metastable states in macromolecules.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2013-10-21T12:10:20.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "symmetry breaking",
      "universal features",
      "energetics",
      "phase space volume changes",
      "boltzmanns microscopic interpretation"
    ],
    "tags": [
      "journal article"
    ],
    "publication": {
      "doi": "10.1038/nphys2940",
      "journal": "Nature Physics",
      "year": 2014,
      "month": "Jun",
      "volume": 10,
      "number": 6,
      "pages": 457
    },
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 7,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable",
      "adsabs": "2014NatPh..10..457R"
    }
  }
}