English

How isolated is enough for an "isolated" system in statistical mechanics?

Quantum Physics 2017-06-09 v1 Quantum Gases

Abstract

Irreversible processes are frequently adopted to account for the entropy increase in classical thermodynamics. However, the corresponding physical origins are not always clear, e.g. in a free expansion process, a typical model in textbooks. In this letter, we study the entropy change during free expansion for a particle with the thermal de Broglie wavelength (λT\lambda_{T}) in a one-dimensional square trap with size LL. By solely including quantum dephasing as an irreversible process, we recover classical result of entropy increase in the classical region (LλTL\gg\lambda_{T}), while predict prominent discrepancies in the quantum region (LλTL\ll\lambda_{T}) because of non-equilibrium feature of trapped atoms after expansion. It is interesting to notice that the dephasing, though absent in classical system, is critical to clarify mysteries in classical thermodynamics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.02636,
  title  = {How isolated is enough for an "isolated" system in statistical mechanics?},
  author = {Hui Dong and Da-wei Wang and M. B. Kim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.02636},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:13:06.269Z