Abstract

Harvesting energy from the environment is a central task in many applications, where random fluctuations possibly arising from disparate sources at different scales, can be converted into work. Here we show that a non-Markovian linear Langevin equation can very well describe different energy harvester systems, such as piezoelectric and electromagnetic devices driven by broadband random vibrations. We show that fluctuations [1] and temporal correlations [2] of the extracted power are successfully predicted by the model and that the non-equilibrium behaviour can be inferred when the coupled dynamics of the system can be measured [3]. [1] Stochastic thermodynamics of a piezoelectric energy harvester model L Costanzo, A Lo Schiavo, A Sarracino, M Vitelli Entropy 23 (6), 677 (2021) [2] Stochastic Thermodynamics of an Electromagnetic Energy Harvester L Costanzo, A Lo Schiavo, A Sarracino, M Vitelli Entropy 24 (9), 1222 (2023) [3] Inference of time-reversal asymmetry from time-series in a piezoelectric energy harvester L Costanzo, A Baldassarri, A Lo Schiavo, A Sarracino and M Vitelli (in preparation)