We study the problem of optimizing released heat or dissipated work in stochastic thermodynamics. In the overdamped limit these functionals have singular solutions, previously interpreted as protocol jumps. We show that a regularization, penalizing a properly defined acceleration, changes the jumps into boundary layers of finite width. We show that in the limit of vanishing boundary layer width no heat is dissipated in the boundary layer, while work can be done. We further give an alternative interpretation of the fact that the optimal protocols in the overdamped limit are given by optimal deterministic transport (Burgers equation).

• Received 11 November 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.85.020103