Affinity and Fluctuations in a Mesoscopic Noria

Abstract

We exhibit the invariance of cycle affinities in finite state Markov processes under various natural probabilistic constructions, for instance under conditioning and under a new combinatorial construction that we call ``drag and drop''. We show that cycle affinities have a natural probabilistic meaning related to first passage non-equilibrium fluctuation relations that we establish.

30 pages, 1 figure