Internal seminar - Henry Alston (QBio team 11)

Abstract: Active matter describes systems driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium by the local consumption and dissipation of energy at the microscopic scale. This departure allows for a myriad of striking collective emergent phenomena that are inimitable in passive systems. These systems constitute a promising candidate for physical models of living matter, which exhibits many different microscopic processes capable of sustaining a system out of equilibrium. In this talk, I will quantify the energetic cost of non-equilibrium pairwise forces [1] (e.g. fluctuating/non-reciprocal) and discuss the connection between entropy production and dynamical irreversibility in active systems [2]. 

Refs: 
[1] H Alston*, L Cocconi*, T Bertrand - "Non-equilibrium thermodynamics of diffusion in fluctuating potentials", Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical 55 274004, 2022
[2] H Alston, L Cocconi, T Bertrand - "Irreversibility across a nonreciprocal PT-symmetry-breaking phase transition", Physical Review Letters 131 258301, 2023