Related papers: Thermodynamics and evolutionary biology through op…
Concepts of everyday use like energy, heat, and temperature have acquired a precise meaning after the development of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics provides the basis for understanding how heat and work are related and with the general…
Validity of local equilibrium has been questioned for non-equilibrium systems which are characterized by delayed response. In particular, for systems with non-zero thermodynamic inertia, the assumption of local equilibrium leads to negative…
The purpose of this study is to consider the near future of civilization in the framework of thermodynamics. Kardashev's proposal to evaluate the development of celestial civilizations by the amount of energy they are able to use was…
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…
In this work, we consider a mechanical system whose mass tensor implements a scalar product in a Riemannian manifold. This system is controlled with the help of forces and torques. A cost functional is minimized to achieve an optimal…
In the past years, a remarkable mapping has been found between the dynamics of a population of M individuals undergoing random mutations and selection, and that of a single system in contact with a thermal bath with temperature 1/M. This…
The variational method is very important in mathematical and theoretical physics because it allows us to describe the natural systems by physical quantities independently from the frame of reference used. A global and statistical approach…
The response of ecosystems to perturbations is considered from a thermodynamic perspective by acknowledging that, as for all macroscopic systems and processes, the dynamics and stability of ecosystems is subject to definite thermodynamic…
A microscopic definition of the thermodynamic entropy in an isolated quantum system must satisfy (i) additivity, (ii) extensivity and (iii) the second law of thermodynamics. We show that the diagonal entropy, which is the Shannon entropy in…
The second law of thermodynamics, formulated as an ultimate bound on the maximum extractable work, has been rigorously derived in multiple scenarios. However, the unavoidable limitations that emerge due to the lack of control on small…
In this paper we study a class of physical systems that combine a finite number of mechanical and thermodynamic observables. We call them finite dimensional thermo-mechanical systems. We introduce these systems by means of simple examples.…
The observed general time-asymmetric behavior of macroscopic systems -- embodied in the second law of thermodynamics -- arises naturally from time-symmetric microscopic laws due to the great disparity between macro and micro-scales. More…
Thermodynamics is based on the notions of energy and entropy. While energy is the elementary quantity governing physical dynamics, entropy is the fundamental concept in information theory. In this work, starting from first principles, we…
Development of thermodynamic induction up to second order gives a dynamical bifurcation for thermodynamic variables and allows for the prediction and detailed explanation of nonequilibrium phase transitions with associated spontaneous…
We improve on our version of the second law of thermodynamics as a deterministic theorem for quantum spin systems in two basic aspects. The first concerns the general statement of the second law: spontaneous changes in an adiabatically…
The backbone of nonequilibrium thermodynamics is the stability structure, where entropy is related to a Lyapunov function of thermodynamic equilibrium. Stability is the background of natural selection: unstable systems are temporary, and…
The explanation of the apparent universality of thermodynamics points toward the extension of the usual conceptual background of the second law. Arguments are collected that a basic guiding idea of stability of thermodynamic equilibrium…
Here we postulate three laws which form a mathematical framework to capture the essence of Darwinian evolutionary dynamics. The second law is most quantitative and is explicitly expressed by a unique form of stochastic differential…
It has previously been shown that it is more general to describe the evolution of the universe based on the emergence of the space and the energy balance relation. Here we investigate the thermodynamic properties of the universe described…
A scheme for treating the Second Law of thermodynamics as a constraint and accounting for the approximate nature of constitutive assumptions in continuum thermomechanics is discussed. An unconstrained, concave, variational principle is…