Exponential peak and scaling of work fluctuations in modulated systems.

We show that steady-state work fluctuations in periodically modulated systems display universal features, which are not described by the standard fluctuation theorems. Modulated systems often have coexisting stable periodic states. We find that work fluctuations sharply increase near a kinetic phase transition where the state populations are close to each other. We also show that the work variance displays scaling with the distance to a bifurcation point where a stable state disappears and find the critical exponent for a saddle-node bifurcation.