Entropy production in systems with forbidden transitions: the resetting problem

D. M. Busiello, D. Gupta, A. Maritan

Published 2019-04-06Version 1

The entropy production is one of the most important features for systems operating out of equilibrium. The formulation for discrete-state systems goes back to the work of Schnakenberg and hitherto can be carried out when for each transition between two states also the reverse one is allowed. Nevertheless, several physically relevant problems involve forbidden transitions, and the picture becomes even more intriguing when several processes are in play to drive the system out of equilibrium. How to properly estimate the entropy production in this case is still an open question. Here, we propose an argument to understand this challenging situation. Finally, we apply our approach to the case of the resetting problem.