Deciding how far is far from equilibrium

Nonequilibrium systems have both fundamental and technological interest for their unusual behavior with research efforts mainly focused on their properties. Surprisingly, little research effort has been put on diagnosing how far a system is from equilibrium. Clearly, addressing such an issue is of fundamental and technological relevance. To this end, we present results of how a particle in contact with a heat reservoir is being driven away from equilibrium by a time dependent potential well. The methodology can be straightforwardly extended to systems with more particles and under the influence of more realistic potentials.