Dissipation of energy and of information in nonequilibrium reaction-diffusion systems

In this paper, we prove a general inequality for the macroscopic relaxation towards a stationary nonequilibrium state. Namely, the rate of dissipation of energy in the system always exceeds the rate of dissipation of information (up to temperature). Here the information function is defined as the logarithm of the stationary probability distribution divided by the volume. The equality is achieved if and only if the stationary probability distribution is an equilibrium distribution function. This implies a tower bound for the work needed to produce a fluctuation away from the stationary state, which should have experimental consequences. [S1063-651X(98)12709-5].