Related papers: Physically Impossible?
The available enthalpy is an early form of the modern thermodynamic concept of exergy, which is the generic name for the amount of work obtainable when some matter is brought to a state of equilibrium with its surroundings by means of…
Thermodynamics imposes restrictions on what state transformations are possible. In the macroscopic limit of asymptotically many independent copies of a state---as for instance in the case of an ideal gas---the possible transformations…
A goal of physics is to understand the greatest possible breadth of natural phenomena in terms of the most economical set of basic concepts. However, as the understanding of physics has developed historically, its pedagogy and language have…
In classical thermodynamic processes the unavoidable presence of irreversibility, quantified by the entropy production, carries two energetic footprints: the reduction of extractable work from the optimal, reversible case, and the…
Universal properties of efficiency at maximum power are investigated in a general setting. In particular, it is demonstrated how successive symmetries placed upon the dynamics manifest themselves at the macroscopic level. A general…
In recent years we have witnessed a concentrated effort to make sense of thermodynamics for small-scale systems. One of the main difficulties is to capture a suitable notion of work that models realistically the purpose of quantum machines,…
We review and investigate the general theory of thermodynamics of computation, and derive the fundamental inequalities that set the lower bounds of the work requirement and the heat emission during a computation. These inequalities…
Physical systems that power motion and create structure in a fixed amount of time dissipate energy and produce entropy. Whether living or synthetic, systems performing these dynamic functions must balance dissipation and speed. Here, we…
The thermodynamic definition of entropy can be extended to nonequilibrium systems based on its relation to information. To apply this definition in practice requires access to the physical system's microstates, which may be prohibitively…
First, Second and Combined Laws of Thermodynamics are revised in terms of entropy change, partial entropy, partial volume, and chemical potential.
When the difference between changes in energy and entropy at a given temperature is correlated with the ratio between the same changes in energy and entropy at zero average free energy of an ensemble of similar but distinct molecule-sized…
The universal concept of complexity by the dynamic redundance paradigm and the ensuing concept of extended dynamic fractality (physics/9806002) are applied here to higher levels of complexity corresponding to living systems. After recalling…
The entropy production is commonly interpreted as measuring the distance from equilibrium. However, this explanation lacks a rigorous description due to the absence of a natural equilibrium measure. The present analysis formalizes this…
Entropic-force cosmology provides, in contrast with dark energy descriptions, a concrete physical understanding of the accelerated expansion of the universe. The acceleration appears to be a consequence of the entropy associated with the…
Entropy production characterizes irreversibility. This viewpoint allows us to consider the thermodynamic uncertainty relation, which states that a higher precision can be achieved at the cost of higher entropy production, as a relation…
This is a review on entropy in various fields of mathematics and science. Its scope is to convey a unified vision of the classical as well as some newer entropy notions to a broad audience with an intermediate background in dynamical…
Considering the isentropic Euler equations of compressible fluid dynamics with geometric effects included, we establish the existence of entropy solutions for a large class of initial data. We cover fluid flows in a nozzle or in spherical…
We set up a framework for quantum stochastic thermodynamics based solely on experimentally controllable, but otherwise arbitrary interventions at discrete times. Using standard assumptions about the system-bath dynamics and insights from…
A common hope of many physics educators and researchers is that students leave the course with a stronger sense that physics is relevant to them than when they entered the course. Multiple survey measures have attempted to measure shifts in…
Entropy production quantifies the amount of irreversibility of a physical process, leading to fundamental bounds for thermodynamic quantities. It captures the inability to run a physical system forward and then backward, bringing it to the…