Current fluctuations and transport efficiency for general Langevin systems

We derive a universal bound on generalized currents in Langevin systems in terms of the mean-square fluctuations of the current and the total entropy production. This bound generalizes a relation previously found by Barato et al. to arbitrary times and transient states. Using the bound, we define a new efficiency for stochastic transport, which measures how close a given system comes to saturating the bound. The existence of such a bounded efficiency implies that stochastic transport is unavoidably accompanied by a fluctuations and dissipation, which cannot be reduced arbitrarily. We apply the definition of transport efficiency to steady state particle transport and heat engines and show that the transport efficiency may approach unity at finite current, in contrast to the thermodynamic efficiency. Finally, we derive a bound on purely diffusive transport in terms of the Shannon entropy.

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