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It is a great challenge of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics to calculate entropy production within a microscopic theory. In the framework of linear irreversible thermodynamics, we combine the Mori-Zwanzig-Forster projection operator…
A generalization of the Gibbs entropy postulate is proposed based on the BBGKY hierarchy as the nonequilibrium entropy for a system of N interacting particles. This entropy satisfies the basic principles of thermodynamics in the sense that…
The second law of thermodynamics can be described as the non-decreasing of the entropy in the irreversible thermodynamic process. Such phenomenon can be quantitatively evaluated with the irreversible entropy generation (IEG), which was…
For decades, researchers have sought to understand how the irreversibility of the surrounding world emerges from the seemingly time symmetric, fundamental laws of physics. Quantum mechanics conjectured a clue that final irreversibility is…
It has been argued that gravity acts dissipatively on quantum-mechanical systems, inducing thermal fluctuations that become indistinguishable from quantum fluctuations. This has led some authors to demand that some form of time…
Thermodynamic irreversibility is a fundamental concept in statistical physics, yet its experimental measurement remains challenging, especially for complex systems. We introduce a novel random coarse-graining framework to identify…
There is a paradox in the standard model of cosmology. How can matter in the early universe have been in thermal equilibrium, indicating maximum entropy, but the initial state also have been low entropy (the "past hypothesis"), so as to…
H-theorem provides a microscopic foundation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and is therefore essential to establishing statistical physics, but at the same time, H-theorem has been subject to controversy that in part persists till this…
This paper presents an {\it ab initio} derivation of the expression given by irreversible thermodynamics for the rate of entropy production for different classes of diffusive processes. The first class are Lorentz gases, where…
Cosmological adiabatic particle creation results in the generation of irreversible entropy. The evolution of this entropy is examined in a flat Friedmann--Robertson--Walker universe at late times, using a dissipative model with a power-law…
For periodically driven systems, we derive a family of inequalities that relate entropy production with experimentally accessible data for the mean, its dependence on driving frequency, and the variance of a large class of observables. With…
We present a model in which, due to the quantum nature of the signals controlling the implementation time of successive unitary computational steps, \emph{physical} irreversibility appears in the execution of a \emph{logically} reversible…
I describe a toy model of quantum measurement in which wave function collapse is described as a stochastic entropically-driven event guided by interactions between a measured two-state particle and an Ising-like measurement device. The…
Quantum theory's irreducible empirical core is a probability calculus. While it presupposes the events to which (and on the basis of which) it serves to assign probabilities, and therefore cannot account for their occurrence, it has to be…
The proper definition of entropy is fundamental to the relationship between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. It also plays a major role in the recent debate about the validity of the concept of negative temperature. In this paper,…
A heuristic generalization of the Boltzmann-Gibbs microcanonical entropy is proposed, able to describe meta-equilibrium features and evolution of macroscopic systems. Despite its simple-minded derivation, such a function of "collective…
We propose a new approach concerning the introduction of time-irreversibility in statistical mechanics. It is based on a transition function defined in terms of path integral and verifying a time-irreversible equation. We show first how…
The limit of small entropy production is reached in relaxing systems long after preparation, and in stationary driven systems in the limit of small driving power. Surprisingly, for extended systems this limit is not in general the…
It is argued that substantial portions of both Newtonian particle mechanics and general relativity can be viewed as relational (rather than absolute) theories. I furthermore use the relational particle models as toy models to investigate…
Observing stochastic trajectories with rare transitions between states, practically undetectable on time scales accessible to experiments, makes it impossible to directly quantify the entropy production and thus infer whether and how far…