Minimal dissipation in processes far from equilibrium

Abstract

A central goal of thermodynamics is to identify optimal processes during which the least amount of energy is dissipated into the environment. Generally, even for simple systems, such as the parametric harmonic oscillator, optimal control strategies are mathematically involved and contain peculiar and counterintuitive features. We show that optimal driving protocols determined by means of linear-response theory exhibit the same step and δ-peak-like structures that were previously found from solving the full optimal control problem. However, our method is significantly less involved, since only a minimum of a quadratic form has to be determined. In addition, our findings suggest that optimal protocols from linear-response theory are applicable far outside their actual range of validity.