Equation 4 · The Arrow of Time and the Engine of Evolution
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Symbol W
W is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.
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What the article says around this equation
Christopher Jarzynski’s 1997 equality was the opening result. For a system beginning in thermal equilibrium and then driven away from it by an arbitrarily fast, arbitrarily far-from-equilibrium protocol, the exponential average of the work W performed on it recovers the equilibrium free-energy difference F between the protocol’s start and end points exactly:
Sources cited in the article section
- [5] Nonequilibrium Equality for Free Energy Differences ↗
- [6] Entropy production fluctuation theorem and the nonequilibrium work relation for free energy differences ↗
- [7] Verification of the Crooks fluctuation theorem and recovery of RNA folding free energies ↗
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