Thermodynamic correlation inequalities for finite times and transients

Abstract: Recently, a thermodynamic bound on correlation times was formulated in [A. Dechant, J. Garnier-Brun, S.-i. Sasa, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 167101 (2023)], showing how the decay of correlations in Langevin dynamics is bounded by short-time fluctuations and dissipation. Whereas these original results only address very long observation times in steady-state dynamics, we here generalize the respective inequalities to finite observations and general initial conditions. We utilize the connection between correlations and the fluctuations of time-integrated density functionals and generalize the direct stochastic calculus approach from [C. Dieball and A. Godec, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 087101 (2023)] which paves the way for further generalizations. We address the connection between short and long time scales, as well as the saturation of the bounds via complementary spectral-theoretic arguments. Motivated by the spectral insight, we formulate all results also for complex-valued observables.