2008/03/04 by David Wu, David J. Wu, Kingshuk Ghosh +15
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Data Analysis #FOS: Physical sciences #Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics #Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an) #physics.bio-ph #physics.data-an
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0803.0360
4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letters
arxiv created 2008/03/04 · openalex publication_date 2008/03/04 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the trajectories of a single colloidal particle as it hops between two energy wells A and B, which are sculpted using adjacent optical traps by controlling their respective power levels and separation. Whereas the dynamical behaviors of such systems are often treated by master-equation methods that focus on particles as actors, we analyze them here instead using a trajectory-based variational method called Maximum Caliber, which utilizes a dynamical partition function. We show that the Caliber strategy accurately predicts the full dynamics that we observe in the experiments: from the observed averages, it predicts second and third moments and covariances, with no free parameters. The covariances are the dynamical equivalents of Maxwell-like equilibrium reciprocal relations and Onsager-like dynamical relations. In short, this work describes an experimental model system for exploring full trajectory distributions in one-particle two-state systems, and it validates the Caliber approach as a useful way to understand trajectory-based dynamical distribution functions in this system.