Nonequilibrium Third Law of Thermodynamics

Abstract: The extended Third Law of thermodynamics for nonequilibrium jump processes is studied in previous collaborative papers (Kh et al.,2023) [1,2], where the nonequilibrium heat capacity and the excess heat with the corresponding quasipotential are introduced. The extended Third Law states that the nonequilibrium heat capacity vanishes under two conditions as the temperature approaches zero. The current paper presents a concise overview of key papers addressing the nonequilibrium calorimetry and the nonequilibrium Nernst postulate (the nonequilibrium Third Law of thermodynamics). The quasipotential is a crucial quantity to calculate the nonequilibrium heat capacity. The new result presented in this work includes an interpretation of the quasipotential in terms of the mean time taken by the Markov jump process, starting from a given state, to reach other states for the first time.