Equation 13 · Part 7 · From Origins to Frontier: A History of Stochastic Thermodynamics and Complex Systems
subtraction
subtraction
What this part means
Subtract the following term or group from the preceding one. A leading minus marks a negative quantity.
Its job in the formula
Subtract the following term or group from the preceding one. A leading minus marks a negative quantity.
Full expression→subtraction→Article meaning
The passage around this formula
This is a striking claim on its face: it says a quantity defined only for reversible, quasistatic processes — a free energy difference — can be computed from measurements of an irreversible process, no matter how fast or violent the driving, provided enough repetitions are averaged. Two years later, Gavin Crooks derived a closely related and in some respects more general result, the Crooks fluctuation theorem, in “Entropy Production Fluctuation Theorem and the Nonequilibrium Work Relation for Free Energy Differences,” published in Physical Review E in 1999 [ 4 ] . Crooks’s relation compares the probability of observing work W in a forward protocol to the probability of observing -W in the…
Learn the underlying idea
Addition combines quantities; subtraction measures the signed difference between them. Parentheses show what is combined before the rest of the expression is evaluated.
Open the illustrated addition and subtraction in an equation guide →
Sources cited in the surrounding passage
These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.