International Satellite Meeting on
Fluctuation and dissipation phenomena in driven systems far from equilibrium

Aims and Perspectives

In recent years several topics in the field of statistical physics far from thermal equilibrium have experienced an enormous progress. This applies in particular to the study of fluctuation and dissipation phenomena in driven diffusive systems. The increasing interest in theoretical and experimental studies is motivated by the fact that the well-known fluctuation-dissipation is generally not valid under non-equilibrium conditions, opening the door for new physical phenomena.

Non-equilibrium systems are fascinating because they have a number of properties which contrast with equilibrium systems: phase transitions in one dimension, non-local free energy functionals, violation of the Einstein relation between the compressibility and the density fluctuation, as well as non-Gaussian density fluctuations. One of the reasons for the increasing interest in fluctuation-dissipation phenomena is the so-called Jarzynsky relation which predicts that the average of the work performed on a system driven between two states is directly related to the corresponding difference in the free energy. This is a rather remarkable result because it suggests a direct relation between non-equilibrium and equilibrium quantities and can be accessed in experiments. Another interesting development concerns large deviation functions of density profiles of the current through simple systems in contact with two reservoirs at different densities. Recently the understanding of such system advanced significantly by solving simple models exactly.

Another closely related topic investigates slow coarsening dynamics in systems with short- and long range interactions. In certain models it could be shown that systems with slow coarsening can be described effectively by multi-component models. This in turn led to an increased interest in models with multi-component order parameters. In the past few years significant progress was achieved in classifying possible types of slow coarsening in low dimensions.

Particularly challenging is the discovery that so far unrelated fields such as fluctuating interfaces and random matrix theory can be used to solve certain problems in non-equilibrium statistical physics. As a recent breakthrough, the current distribution in an asymmetric exclusion process or -- equivalently -- the height distribution of a roughening Kardar-Parisi-Zhang interface in a non-equilibrium growth process could be computed exactly by means of a highly non-trivial mapping to a certain ensemble of random matrices.

The STATPHYS satellite meeting is a short and focused workshop centered around three rapidly evolving topics in the field of fluctuating driven systems, namely, current fluctuations, large deviations, and slow coarsening in multi component systems. The aim is to bring together scientists from different directions, including

• Phenomenological theoretical physicists interested in fundamental issues of non-equilibrium statistical physics

• Mathematically-oriented physicists working on Bethe ansatz and random matrix theories

• Experimentalists interested in universal phenomena far from equilibrium

The workshop is organized as an intense meeting of three days with 4-5 invited talks per day and ample time for discussions and collaborations plus two optional slots per day for short contributed talks. In addition to the usual discussions at the end of each talk, three hours per day are available for discussion and collaboration in order to create a balance between talks and opportunities for cooperation. By restricting the number of talks the aim is to generate an interactive atmosphere in intended contrast to the main conference in Genova.