Optical Tweezers: Experimental Demonstrations of the Fluctuation Theorem
Abstract
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries famous scientists like Boltzmann, Loschmidt, Maxwell and Einstein tried, unsuccessfully, to find the link between the time-reversible equations of motion of individual molecules and irreversible thermodynamics. The solution to this puzzle was found in 1993, and the link is now known as the Fluctuation Theorem (FT). In the decade that followed theory and computer simulation tested the FT and, in 2002, an experiment indirectly demonstrated the FT.¶ This thesis describes original experiments that demonstrate the FT directly using Optical Tweezers. A related expression, known as the Kawasaki Identity, is also experimentally demonstrated. These experimental results provide a rigorous demonstration that irreversible dynamics can be obtained from a system with time-reversible dynamics.