Fluctuations, information flow and experimental measurements

January 26 & 27th, 2010





The workshop will take place at the
École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (ESCPCI)
Amphithéâtre Langevin, in the 5th district of Paris (quartier Latin)








The conferences are free of charge.




The aim of the workshop is to discuss both how fluctuations can be used to extract information from various systems and how they limit our measurement possibilities. The lectures will cover theroretical approaches as well as experimental results, emphasizing the following topics: analysis of dynamical systems, fluctuation theorems, information cost and dissipation, time arrow, population genetics, Maxwell's daemons, optimal work extraction, quantum measurements and emergence of classical laws.





Program (tentative)




Tuesday 26th January




10h00 Registration, coffee and introduction.




• 10h30 Felix Ritort (SBL, Facultat de Fisica, Barcelona, Spain).




Recent progress in fluctuation theorems and free energy recovery.




• 11h30 Christian Van den Broeck (Universiteit Hasselt, Belgium).




Lessons in Reversibility.




• 14h00 Sergio Ciliberto (ENS, Lyon, France).




Aging after a quench at the critical point.




• 15h00 Jorge Kurchan (PMMH, ESPCI, Paris, France).




What are the experiments on the Fluctuation Theorem testing, actually?




• 16h30 Michael Lässig (ITP, University of Cologne, Germany).




Nonequilibrium fluctuation theory of biological evolution.




Wednesday 27th January




• 09h00 Theo Nieuwenhuizen (ITFA, Amsterdam, Netherlands).




Brownian entanglement — Entanglement in classical Brownian motion.




• 10h00 Časlav Brukner (IQOQI, Fakultät für Physik, Wien, Austria).




The quantum to classical transition and the complexity of Schrödinger-cat states.




• 11h30 Roger Balian (CEA-IPhT, Gif-Sur-Yvette, France).
TBA




• 14h00 Christian Maes (ITF, KU Leuven, Belgium).




Fluctuation response relations out-of-equilibrium.




• 15h00 Pierre Gaspard (CENOLI, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium).
TBA




• 16h30 Ivan Junier (ISC-PIF, Paris, France).




Using daemons to investigate small systems.






For more details & registration
http://www.iscpif.fr/FIFEM2010








The workshop is a satellite of the “Journées de physique statistique 2010” that will take place on the 28-29th January:




http://www.comphys.ethz.ch/jstat/