Fluctuation relations for anisotropic systems

Abstract

Currents of particles or energy in driven nonequilibrium steady states are known to satisfy certain symmetries, referred to as fluctuation relations, determining the ratio of the probabilities of positive fluctuations to negative ones. A generalization of these fluctuation relations has been proposed recently for extended nonequilibrium systems of dimension greater than one, assuming, crucially, that they are isotropic [P. I.\ Hurtado, C.\ Pérez-Espigares, J. J.\ del Pozo, and P. L.\ Garrido, Proc.\ Nat.\ Acad.\ Sci.\ (USA) \textbf{108}, 7704 (2011)]. Here we relax this assumption and derive a fluctuation relation for $d$-dimensional systems having anisotropic bulk driving rates. We illustrate this anisotropic fluctuation relation for the particle current fluctuations in the 2-$d$ anisotropic zero-range process, using both exact and fluctuating hydrodynamic approaches.

To be published in Europhysics Letters