Non-dissipative effects in nonequilibrium systems

Abstract: Studying the role of activity parameters and the nature of time-symmetric path-variables constitutes an important part of nonequilibrium physics, so we argue. The relevant variables are residence times and the undirected traffic between different states. Parameters are the reactivities, escape rates and accessibilities and how those possibly depend on the imposed driving. All those count in the frenetic contribution to statistical forces, response and fluctuations, operational even in the stationary distribution when far enough from equilibrium. As these time-symmetric aspects can vary independently from the entropy production we call the resulting effects non-dissipative, ranking among features of nonequilibrium that have traditionally not been much included in statistical mechanics until recently. Those effects can be linked to localization such as in negative differential conductivity, in jamming or glassy behavior or in the slowing down of thermalization. Activities may decide the direction of physical currents away from equilibrium, and the nature of the stationary distribution, including its population inversion, is not as in equilibrium decided by energy-entropy content. The ubiquity of non-dissipative effects and of that frenetic contribution in theoretical considerations invites a more operational understanding and statistical forces outside equilibrium appear to provide such a frenometry.