Short-time fluctuations of displacements and work

van Zon, Ramses; Ashwin, S. S.; Cohen, E. G. D.

Short-time fluctuations of displacements and work

Authors

van Zon, Ramses

Ashwin, S. S.

Cohen, E. G. D.

Description

A recent theorem giving the initial behavior of very short-time fluctuations of particle displacements in classical many-body systems is discussed. It has applications to equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems, one of which is a series expansion of the distribution of work fluctuations around a Gaussian function. To determine the time-scale at which this series expansion is valid, we present preliminary numerical results for a Lennard-Jones fluid. These results suggest that the series expansion converges up to time scales on the order of a picosecond, below which a simple Gaussian function for the distribution of the displacements can be used.
10 pages, 3 figures