Optimising the work extracted from a trapped colloidal particle under non-holonomic constraints

by Antonio Prados (Universidad de Sevilla)

Thursday 22 Nov 2018, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Rome

Aula 5 (Dipartimento di Fisica - Ed. E.Fermi)

We consider a trapped overdamped Brownian particle that is rapidly and isothermally driven between two equilibrium states, corresponding to different trap stiffness k. By applying Pontryagin's principle, we find the optimal time dependence k(t) that minimises the work performed on the particle under the non-holonomic constraint 0<=k<=k_max, an experimentally relevant situation. The main physical implications brought about by the bounds are discussed, and we compare our results with the known case of unbounded stiffness.