Paper detail

Heat and work fluctuations for a harmonic oscillator

The formalism of Kundu et al. [J. Stat. Mech. (2011) P03007], for computing the large deviations of heat flow in harmonic systems, is applied to the case of single Brownian particle in a harmonic trap and coupled to two heat baths at different temperatures. The large-t form of the moment generating function <exp[-sQ]> ~ g(s) exp[t m(s)], of the total heat flow Q from one of the baths to the particle in a given time interval t, is studied and exact explicit expressions are obtained for both m(s) and g(s). For a special case of the single particle problem that corresponds to the work done by an external stochastic force on a harmonic oscillator coupled to a thermal bath, the large-t form of the moment generating function is analyzed to obtain the exact large deviation function as well as the complete asymptotic forms of the probability density function of the work.