Thermodynamic-kinetic uncertainty relation: properties and an information-theoretic interpretation

Abstract: Universal relations that characterize the fluctuations of nonequilibrium systems are of fundamental importance. The thermodynamic and kinetic uncertainty relations impose upper bounds on the precision of currents solely by total entropy production and dynamical activity, respectively. Recently, a tighter bound that imposes on the precision of currents by both total entropy production and dynamical activity has been derived (referred to as the TKUR). In this paper, we show that the TKUR gives the tightest bound of a class of inequalities that imposes an upper bound on the precision of currents by arbitrary functions of the entropy production, dynamical activity, and time interval. Furthermore, we show that the TKUR can be rewritten as an inequality between two Kullback-Leibler divergences. One comes from the ratio of entropy production to dynamical activity, the other comes from the Kullback-Leibler divergence between two probability distributions defined on two-element set, which are characterized by the ratio of precision of the time-integrated current to dynamical activity.