Relaxation and thermalization in many-body systems coupled to different bosonic degrees of freedom

Synopsis

Christopher Battle, Chase P. Broedersz, Nikta Fakhri, Veikko F. Geyer, Jonathon Howard, Christoph F. Schmidt and Fred C. MacKintosh

Science 352, 604-607 (2016).      (Issue of April 28, 2016.) 

Editor’s Summary:  “Living systems clearly operate out of thermodynamic equilibrium at the molecular scale.  How these activities are manifest at the cellular scale, however, has been unclear.  Battle et al. use video microscopy together with statistical thermodynamics to unambiguously identify which random fluctuations at the cellular scale are out of equilibrium (see the Perspective by Rupprecht and Prost).  Transitions between states obey a detailed balance in equilibrium, whereas imbalanced transitions point to nonequilibrium dynamics.  For instance, nonequilibrium dynamics can be identified in the periodic beating of a flagellum and in the nonperiodic fluctuations of primary cilia.”