Experiments on a classical microscopic system show that, while the second principle of thermodynamics is still valid on average, it can be circumvented experimentally in 95% of cases! A study conducted at the Physics Laboratory of ENS de Lyon, published in Physical Review Letters.
We demonstrate experimentally that, applying optimal protocols that drive the system between two equilibrium states characterized by a free energy difference «F, we can maximize the probability of performing the transition between the two states with a work W smaller than »F. The second law holds only on average, resulting in the inequality
=?F can be larger than 95%. Very fast protocols are a key feature to obtain these results, which are explained in terms of the Jarzynski equality.
