Related papers: Thermodynamic laws in isolated systems
Equilibrium statistics of finite Hamiltonian systems is fundamentally described by the microcanonical ensemble (ME). Canonical, or grand-canonical partition functions are deduced from this by Laplace transform. Only in the thermodynamic…
A major part of the many thermally driven processes in our natural environment as well as in engineering solutions of Carnot-type machinery is based on the second law of thermodynamics (or principle of entropy increase). An interesting link…
We extend classical coarse-grained entropy, commonly used in many branches of physics, to the quantum realm. We find two coarse-grainings, one using measurements of local particle numbers and then total energy, and the second using local…
Microcanonical statistics can be well applied to non-extensive systems like nuclei, atomic clusters and systems at phase transitions of first order with inhomogeneous configurations like phase separation. No thermodynamic limit has to be…
We show that states of macroscopic systems with purported absolute negative temperatures are not stable under small, yet arbitrary, perturbations. We prove the previous statement using the fact that, in equilibrium, the entropy takes its…
A classical and quantum mechanical generalized second law of thermodynamics in cosmology implies constraints on the effective equation of state of the universe in the form of energy conditions, obeyed by many known cosmological solutions,…
Recently, exotic black holes whose masses and angular momenta are interchanged have been found, and it is known that their entropies depend only on the $inner$ horizon areas. But a basic problem of these entropies is that the second law of…
The notion of negative absolute temperature emerges naturally from Boltzmann's definition of "surface" microcanonical entropy in isolated systems with a bounded energy density. Recently, the well-posedness of such construct has been…
According to self-similarity hypothesis, the thermodynamic limit could be defined from the scaling laws for the system self-similarity by using the microcanonical ensemble. This analysis for selfgravitating systems yields the following…
We consider a question motivated by the third law of thermodynamics: can there be a local temperature arbitrarily close to absolute zero in a nonequilibrium quantum system? We consider nanoscale quantum conductors with the source reservoir…
This letter presents a new, solely thermodynamical argument for considering the states of the quantum isolated horizon of a black hole as distinguishable. We claim that only if the states are distinguishable, the thermodynamic entropy is an…
This work presents a general unifying theoretical framework for quantum non-equilibrium systems. It is based on a re-statement of the dynamical problem as one of inferring the distribution of collision events that move a system toward…
Statistical thermodynamics is valuable as a conceptual structure that shapes our thinking about equilibrium thermodynamic states. A cloud of unresolved questions surrounding the foundations of the theory could lead an impartial observer to…
Microcanonical description is characterized by the presence of an internal symmetry closely related with the dynamical origin of this ensemble: the reparametrization invariance. Such symmetry possibilities the development of a non…
We establish an analytical criterion for dynamical thermalization within harmonic systems, applicable to both classical and quantum models. Specifically, we prove that thermalization of various observables, such as particle energies in…
An interesting question to explore in physics classes is whether gravity violates the second law of thermodynamics. Standard physics textbooks provide little to no discussion of the relationship between entropy and gravity, and the same is…
The third law of thermodynamics dictates that the entropy of materials becomes zero as temperature ($T$) approaches zero. Contrarily, glass and other similar materials exhibit nonzero entropy at $T=0$, which contradicts the third law. For…
Classical thermodynamics is built with the concept of equilibrium states. However, it is less clear how equilibrium thermodynamics emerges through the dynamics that follows the principle of quantum mechanics. In this paper, we develop a…
The nature of the behaviour of an isolated many-body quantum system periodically driven in time has been an open question since the beginning of quantum mechanics. After an initial transient, such a system is known to synchronize with the…
Despite well over a century of effort, the proper expression for the classical entropy in statistical mechanics remains a subject of debate. The Boltzmann entropy (calculated from a surface in phase space) has been criticized as not being…