2026/04/30 by Kento Yasuda, Bin Zheng, Zheng Bs +6
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Control and Stability of Dynamical Systems #Micro and Nano Robotics #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1674-1056/ae8da8
openalex publication_date 2026/07/21 · openalex created_date 2026/07/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract The Onsager principle provides a variational route to the phenomenological equations of dissipative dynamics through the minimization of the Rayleighian. We develop a covariant formulation of the Onsager principle for active and inertial systems, ensuring geometric consistency under coordinate transformations. To further incorporate thermal fluctuations, we formulate the Onsager-Machlup principle for active and inertial systems by considering the Onsager-Machlup functional and the corresponding path probability for stochastic trajectories. Requiring that the path probability obeys the detailed fluctuation theorem, we show that the extended Onsager-Machlup theory is consistent with stochastic thermodynamics. The extended OP and OMP offer a unified and useful variational framework for deriving the dynamical equations of active and inertial systems.