Research Interests
- Current research centers on theoretical and experimental investigations of fluctuation processes in noise-driven dynamical systems that are far from thermal equilibrium. Theoretical work focuses on the development of novel metrics for characterizing how far from equilibrium a system is. We focus on cases where established metrics such as entropy production rate may not be easily assessed, for example, in systems driven by non-thermal noises. We focus on metrics such as stochastic area and irreversibility fields which lead to generalizations of the fluctuation-dissipation relation. This work is motivated in part by an effort to understand experiments from a range of fields including biophysics (e.g., filaments embedded in viscoelastic networks with active noise sources), electronic transport (e.g., noise-driven electronic circuits and networks), and atomic physics (e.g., noise-driven trapped ions). Two problems of current interest are: 1) the extension of the stochastic area and related concepts to high-dimensional spatially continuous systems such as elastic filaments (e.g., strings or rods) embedded in viscoelastic media and driven by active noise sources; 2) studies of first-passage processes associated with heating of trapped ions in Paul traps (in collaboration with the group of Prof. Noel at Duke).