Superstatistical generalization of the work fluctuation theorem

Abstract

We derive a generalized version of the work fluctuation theorem for nonequilibrium systems with spatio-temporal temperature fluctuations. For chi-square distributed inverse temperature we obtain a generalized fluctuation theorem based on q-exponentials, whereas for other temperature distributions more complicated formulae arise. Since q-exponentials have a power law decay, the decay rate in this generalized fluctuation theorem is much slower than the conventional exponential decay. This implies that work fluctuations can be of relevance for the design of micro and nano structures, since the work done on the system is relatively much larger than in the conventional fluctuation theorem.