Related papers: A Review of Macroscopic Motion in Thermodynamic Eq…
Small thermodynamic systems exhibit peculiar behavior different from that observed in long-scale systems. Non-equilibrium processes taking place in those systems are strongly influenced by the presence of fluctuations which can be large.…
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…
We analyze, from the thermodynamical point of view, mechanical systems in which there is production of mechanical energy due to an internal source of energy, and compare that analysis with the similar one for the "symmetric" motion which…
Lack of knowledge about the detailed many-particle motion on the microscopic scale is a key issue in any theoretical description of a macroscopic experiment. For systems at or close to thermal equilibrium, statistical mechanics provides a…
We report model calculations of the time-dependent internal energy and entropy for a single quasi-free massive quantum particle at a constant temperature. We show that the whole process started from a fully coherent quantum state to…
The dynamics of irreversible relaxation of non-equilibrium macroscopic systems is discussed. Arguments are developed showing that the general process is supported by two independent successive mechanisms. One is mixing and it follows pure…
Active matter is rapidly becoming a key paradigm of out-of-equilibrium soft matter exhibiting complex collective phenomena, yet the thermodynamics of such systems remain poorly understood. In this letter we study the nonequilbrium…
The validity of the Second Law of thermodynamics, indisputable in the macroscopic world, is challenged at the mesoscopic level: a mesoscopic isolated system, possessing spatial dimensions of the order of a few microns, is capable, as shown…
We study the nature of and approach to thermal equilibrium in isolated quantum systems. An individual isolated macroscopic quantum system in a pure or mixed state is regarded as being in thermal equilibrium if all macroscopic observables…
Thermodynamics is commonly presented as a theory of macroscopic systems in stable equilibrium, built upon assumptions of extensivity and scaling with system size. In this paper, we present a universal formulation of the elementary…
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…
It is shown that a recently proposed model for the gravitational interaction in non relativistic quantum mechanics may turn to be relevant to the derivation of the second law of thermodynamics. In particular, the spreading of the…
The fact that macroscopic systems approach thermal equilibrium may seem puzzling, for example, because it may seem to conflict with the time-reversibility of the microscopic dynamics. We here prove that in a macroscopic quantum system for a…
The extension of thermodynamic principles to active matter remains a challenge due to the non-equilibrium nature inherent to active systems. In this study, we introduce a framework to assess entropy in our minimal macroscopic experiment…
We argue that macroscopic electrodynamics is unsuited to describe the process of radiative thermalization between a levitated nanoparticle in high vacuum and the thermal electromagnetic field. Based on physical arguments, we propose a model…
Macroscopic thermodynamics of equilibrium is constructed for systems obeying power-law canonical distributions. With this, the connection between macroscopic thermodynamics and microscopic statistical thermodynamics is generalized. This is…
Macroscopic many-body systems always exhibit irreversible behaviors together with the entropy increase. However, the underlying microscopic dynamics of the many-body system, either the (quantum) von Neumann or (classical) Liouville…
We study the problem of the approach to equilibrium in a macroscopic quantum system in an abstract setting. We prove that, for a typical choice of "nonequilibrium subspace", any initial state (from the energy shell) thermalizes, and in fact…
In classical systems, we reexamine how macroscopic structures in equilibrium state connect with spatial con- straint on the systems: e.g., volume and density as the constraint for liquids in rigid box, and crystal lattice as the constraint…
The concept of entropy in nonequilibrium macroscopic systems is investigated in the light of an extended equation of motion for the density matrix obtained in a previous study. It is found that a time-dependent information entropy can be…