Overdamped stochastic thermodynamics with multiple reservoirs

Abstract: After establishing stochastic thermodynamics for underdamped Langevin systems in contact with multiple reservoirs, we derive its overdamped limit using timescale separation techniques. The overdamped theory is different from the naive theory that one obtains when starting from overdamped Langevin or Fokker-Planck dynamics and only coincide with it in presence of a single reservoir. The reason is that the coarse-grained fast momenta dynamics reaches a nonequilibrium state which conducts heat in presence of multiple reservoirs. The underdamped and overdamped theory are both shown to satisfy fundamental fluctuation theorems. Their predictions for the heat statistics are derived analytically for a Brownian particle on a ring in contact with two reservoirs and subjected to a non-conservative force and are shown to coincide in the long-time limit.