Prof. Dr. Udo Seifert, (Universität Stuttgart)

For the macroscopic world, classical thermodynamics formulates the laws governing the transformation of various forms of energy into each other. Stochastic thermodynamics extends these concepts to micro- and nano-systems embedded or coupled to a heat bath where fluctuations play a dominant role. Examples are colloidal particles in time-dependent laser traps, single biomolecules manipulated by optical tweezers or AFM tips, and transport through quantum dots. For these systems, exact non-equilibrium relations like the Jarzynski relation, fluctuation theorems and, most recently, a thermodynamic uncertainty relation have been discovered. First, I will introduce the main principles and show a few representative experimental applications. In the second part, I will discuss the universal trade-off between the thermodynamic cost and the precision of any biomolecular, or, more generally, of any stationary non-equilibrium process. By applying this thermodynamic uncertainty relation to molecular motors, I will introduce the emerging field of "thermodynamic inference" where relations from stochastic thermodynamics are used to infer otherwise yet inaccessible properties of (bio)physical and (bio)chemical systems.