Experimental accessibility of generalized fluctuation-dissipation relations for nonequilibrium steady states

Abstract

We study the fluctuation-dissipation theorem for a Brownian particle driven into a nonequilibrium steady state experimentally. We validate two different theoretical variants of a generalized fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the choice of observables crucially affects the accuracy of determining the nonequilibrium response from steady state nonequilibrium fluctuations. © 2010 The American Physical Society.