Related papers: Microscopic Irreversibility and the H Theorem
It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable Universe are irreversible, whereas the equations through which the fundamental laws of physics are formulated are invariant under time reversal. The emergence of…
An attempt is made to de-mystify the apparent "paradox" between microscopic time revsersibility and macroscopic time irreversibility. It is our common experience that a hot cup of coffee cools down to room temperature and it never…
A broken time-reversal symmetry, i.e. broken detailed balance, is central to non-equilibrium physics and is a prerequisite for life. However, it turns out to be quite challenging to unambiguously define and quantify time-reversal symmetry…
The issue of how time reversible microscopic dynamics gives rise to macroscopic irreversible processes has been a recurrent issue in Physics since the time of Boltzmann whose ideas shaped, and essentially resolved, such an apparent…
Quantifying irreversibility of a system using finite information constitutes a major challenge in stochastic thermodynamics. We introduce an observable that measures the time-reversal asymmetry between two states after a given time lag. Our…
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy production in macroscopic systems is non-negative, reaching zero only at thermodynamic equilibrium. As a corollary, this implies that the state trajectory of macroscopic systems is…
It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable Universe are irreversible, whereas the equations in which the laws of physics are formulated are invariant under time reversal. The emergency of irreversibility from the…
The reversibility and recurrence paradoxes are key issues that have been left unsolved in researches on the foundation of thermodynamics since the 19th century. This article shows that (1) the reversibility paradox can be overcome if we pay…
In textbooks on statistical mechanics, one finds often arguments based on classical mechanics, phase space and ergodicity in order to justify the second law of thermodynamics. However, the basic equations of motion of classical mechanics…
It is generally admitted in thermodynamics that, for a given change in volume, the work done by a system is greater in conditions of reversibility than in conditions of irreversibility. If the basic conventions of physics are strictly…
Irreversibility, despite being a necessary condition for thermalization, still lacks a sound understanding in the context of isolated quantum many-body systems. In this work we approach this question by studying the behavior of generic…
Symmetries have a crucial role in today's physics. In this thesis, we are mostly concerned with time reversal invariance (T-symmetry). A physical system is time reversal invariant if its underlying laws are not sensitive to the direction of…
The deterministic and time-reversal symmetric dynamics of isolated quantum systems is at odds with irreversible equilibration observed in generic thermodynamic systems. Standard approaches at a reconciliation employ subjective restrictions…
The emergence of irreversibility in physical processes, despite the fundamentally reversible nature of quantum mechanics, remains an open question in physics. This thesis explores the intricate relationship between quantum mechanics and…
The thermodynamic uncertainty relation gives a lower bound on the amount of dissipation in a mesoscopic system. By considering the fluctuations in the hysteresis of the current -- the sum of the currents in the time-forward and…
Time reversal symmetry is a fundamental property of many quantum mechanical systems. The relation between statistical physics and time reversal is subtle and not all statistical theories conserve this particular symmetry, most notably…
Irreversibility remains one of the least understood concepts in physics. One of the main reasons is the fact that the fundamental laws of classical and quantum physics are time symmetric, whereas macroscopic processes evolve in a preferred…
There is a relation between the irreversibility of thermodynamic processes as expressed by the breaking of time-reversal symmetry, and the entropy production in such processes. We explain on an elementary mathematical level the relations…
The transition probability for time-dependent unitary evolution is invariant under the reversal of protocols just as in the classical Liouvillian dynamics. In this article, we generalize the expression of microscopic reversibility to…
In stochastic thermodynamics, the entropy production of a thermodynamic system is defined by the irreversibility measured by the logarithm of the ratio of the path probabilities in the forward and reverse processes. We derive the relation…