Quantum mechanics

Function (biology)

Biology

Statistics

Steady state (chemistry)

Acoustics

Observable

Large deviations theory

Statistical physics

Lattice (music)

Evolutionary biology

Exponential growth

Physical chemistry

Physics

Trajectory

Mathematics

Exponential function

Work (physics)

Mathematical analysis

Propagator

Monte Carlo method

Chemistry

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics

Physical Review Letters

We describe a framework to reduce the computational effort to evaluate large deviation functions of time integrated observables within nonequilibrium steady states. We do this by incorporating an auxiliary dynamics into trajectory based Monte Carlo calculations, through a transformation of the system's propagator using an approximate guiding function. This procedure importance samples the trajectories that most contribute to the large deviation function, mitigating the exponential complexity of such calculations. We illustrate the method by studying driven diffusion and interacting lattice models in one and two spatial dimensions. Our work offers an avenue to calculate large deviation functions for high dimensional systems driven far from equilibrium.

Exact Fluctuations of Nonequilibrium Steady States from Approximate Auxiliary Dynamics