Jensen bound for the entropy production rate in stochastic thermodynamics

Bounding and estimating entropy production has long been an important goal of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. We recently derived a lower bound on the total and subsystem entropy production rates of continuous stochastic systems. This `Jensen bound' has led to fundamental limits on the performance of collective-transport systems and permitted thermodynamic inference of free-energy transduction between components of bipartite molecular machines. Here we extend the Jensen bound to far greater generality, encompassing position-dependent diffusion, underdamped dynamics, and non-multipartite dynamics.