Related papers: Dynamical mechanisms leading to equilibration in t…
Equilibrium properties of many-body systems with a large number of degrees of freedom are generally expected to be described by statistical mechanics. Such expectations are closely tied to the observation of thermalization, as manifested…
The optimization of the conversion of thermal energy into work and the minimization of dissipation for nano- and mesoscopic systems is a complex challenge because of the important role fluctuations play on the dynamics of small systems. We…
Time dynamics of isolated many-body quantum systems has long been an elusive subject. Very recently, however, meaningful experimental studies of the problem have finally become possible, stimulating theoretical interest as well. Progress in…
Thermodynamic relations are derived from first principles of mechanics for non-equilibrium processes. Since the key role herein is played by the law of increase of entropy, the latter is analyzed at first. It is shown that its derivation…
For a decade the fate of a one-dimensional gas of interacting bosons in an external trapping potential remained mysterious. We here show that whenever the underlying integrability of the gas is broken by the presence of the external…
We study the coupled particle and energy transport in a prototype model of interacting one-dimensional system: the disordered hard-point gas, for which numerical data suggest that the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT diverges with the…
We extend the recently developed non-gaussian thermodynamic formalism \cite{tre98} of a (presumably strongly turbulent) non-Markovian medium to its most general form that allows for the formulation of a consistent thermodynamic theory. All…
Out of thermal equilibrium, an environment imposes effective mechanical forces on microscopical nanofabricated devices, chemical or biological systems. Here we address the question of how to calculate these forces together with the response…
A general formulation of stochastic thermodynamics is presented for open systems exchanging energy and particles with multiple reservoirs. By introducing a partition in terms of "macrostates" (e.g. sets of "microstates"), the consequence on…
Starting from a set of coupled Boltzmann equations, we investigate the thermalization of a two-species cold atomic gas confined either in a box or in an isotropic harmonic trap. We show that the thermalization times, by contrast to the…
Whether and how a system reaches thermalization is a fundamental issue of statistical physics. While for one-dimensional lattices this issue has been intensively studied in terms of energy equipartition for more than half a century, few…
The study of thermal heat engines was pivotal to establishing the principles of equilibrium thermodynamics, with implications far wider than only engine optimization. For nonequilibrium systems, which by definition dissipate energy even at…
The last decade has witnessed the remarkable progress in our understanding of thermalization in isolated quantum systems. Combining the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis with quantum measurement theory, we extend the framework of quantum…
We study the stationary nonequilibrium states of N point particles moving under the influence of an electric field E among fixed obstacles (discs) in a two dimensional torus. The total kinetic energy of the system is kept constant through a…
Stochastic and dynamical processes lie at the heart of all physical, chemical, and biological systems. However, kinetic and thermodynamic properties which characterize these processes have largely been treated separately as they can be…
For the free Fermion gas at thermodynamic equilibrium, the temperature which represents the averaged kinetic energy is demonstrated to have the proper property which is invariant under the Lorentz boost, using the conceptions of the…
Equilibrium statistical mechanics is intended to link the microscopic dynamics of particles to the thermodynamic laws for macroscopic quantities. However, the modern statistical theory is faced with significant difficulties, as applied to…
It is shown that the partial temperatures of a homogeneous multicomponent gas mixture in the thermodynamical equilibrium cannot be equal to each other. New general solutions for equilibrium distribution functions of the multicomponent…
The understanding of the underlying dynamical mechanisms which determine the macroscopic laws of heat conduction is a long standing task of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. A better understanding of the mechanism of heat conduction…
Why do gases reach equilibrium when left to themselves? The canonical answer, originally proffered by Boltzmann, is that the systems have to be ergodic. This answer is now widely regarded as flawed. We argue that some of the main…