Ion‐Wake‐Driven Nonequilibrium Fluctuations in Confined Dusty Plasma Systems

ABSTRACT We study the stochastic thermodynamics for a single dust particle in a low‐temperature plasma, where it is confined by a time‐dependent parabolic trapping potential and is interacting through an ion wake potential which is generated by streaming ions. We numerically solved the overdamped Langevin dynamics through simulation to analyze the stochastic response of the dust particle to external driving for different protocol durations and strength of the ion flow. The ion wake introduces strong anisotropic forces which reshape the confinement environment, leading to complex, non‐Gaussian fluctuations. Our findings show the multi‐modal position distributions, positively skewed work statistics which satisfy the Jarzynski equality, and time‐resolved kurtosis shows the continuous deviations from Gaussianity. These findings provide a quantitative understanding of fluctuation behavior and energy dissipation in driven dusty plasma systems. We believe that this framework may serve as a basis for future investigations into transport, self‐organization, and energy conversion processes in complex plasma environments and other driven soft matter systems.