Dissipation: the phase-space perspective.

We show, through a refinement of the work theorem, that the average dissipation, upon perturbing a Hamiltonian system arbitrarily far out of equilibrium in a transition between two canonical equilibrium states, is exactly given by =W-DeltaF=kTD(rho||rho[over ])=kT, where rho and rho[over ] are the phase-space density of the system measured at the same intermediate but otherwise arbitrary point in time, for the forward and backward process. D(rho||rho[over ]) is the relative entropy of rho versus rho[over ]. This result also implies general inequalities, which are significantly more accurate than the second law and include, as a special case, the celebrated Landauer principle on the dissipation involved in irreversible computations.