Thermodynamic efficiency of self-organisation in nonequilibrium steady states (opens in new tab)

Qianyang Chen, Mikhail Prokopenko Active matter generates order or patterns through nonequilibrium dynamics. An open research challenge is to determine how efficiently a nonequilibrium self-organising system can convert consumed energy into macroscopic order. We study an information-theoretic quantity that directly addresses this challenge by estimating the entropy reduction induced by a small control-parameter perturbation, relative to the generalised work required for the perturbation. This...