A fundamental and intrinsic property of any device or natural system is its relaxation time \tau_{\rm relax}, which is the time it takes to return to equilibrium after the sudden change of a control parameter. Reducing \tau_{\rm relax} is frequently necessary, and is often obtained by a complex feedback process. To overcome the limitations of such an approach, alternative methods based on...
Thermal noise manifests itself as a tiny variance around the mean value of an observable $x$ of a physical system. Usually too small to be noticed, it becomes important in an increasing number of applications, such as quantum systems operated close to their ground state, MEMS and NEMS, frequency standards, or the next generation of gravitational wave detectors$^1$. Its understanding is thus...
We discuss a one-dimensional model of a vibrating rigid rod, in and out of equilibrium. We study stationary states when the system is subject to temperature gradients, which is the nonequilibrium scenario, as compared to constant temperature for the equilibrium situations. While some thermomechanical properties remain substantially unchanged comparing in and out of equilibrium situations, the...
We build a continuous fluctuating description of elastic, conductive and dissipative solids
subject to heat fluxes, which takes fully into account linear thermoelastic couplings.
Under the assumption of local equilibrium, we derive an extension of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem
and obtain the strain fluctuations in the nonequilibrium steady state.
We outline next steps towards the...
