Related papers: The Five Problems of Irreversibility
A comparative analysis of two concepts aimed at microscopic substantiation of thermodynamics and kinetics has been performed. The first concept is based on the idea of microscopic reversibility of the dynamics of a system of particles,…
Active matter describes systems whose constituents convert energy from their surroundings into directed motion, such as bacteria or catalytic colloids. We establish a thermodynamic law for dilute suspensions of interacting active particles…
In the second half of the 19th century, the kinetic theory of gases has probably raised one of the most impassioned debates in the history of science. The so-called reversibility paradox around which intense polemics occurred reveals the…
We establish the global well-posedness of overdamped dynamic density functional theory (DDFT): a nonlinear, nonlocal integro-partial differential equation used in statistical mechanical models of colloidal fluids, and other applications…
Fluctuation theorems are relations constraining the out-of-equilibrium fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities like the entropy production that were initially introduced for classical or quantum systems in contact with a thermal bath. Here…
The fundamental time-reversal invariance of dynamical systems can be broken in various ways. One way is based on the presence of resonances and their interactions giving rise to unstable dynamical systems, leading to well-defined time…
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…
Uncovering the origin of the arrow of time remains a fundamental scientific challenge. Within the framework of statistical physics, this problem was inextricably associated with the second law of thermodynamics, which declares that entropy…
Reciprocal relations correlate fairly accurately a great variety of experimental results. Nevertheless, the concepts of statistical fluctuations, and microscopic reversibility - the bases of the accepted proof of the relations by Onsager -…
This article traces the development of fluctuation theory and its deep connection to irreversibility, from equilibrium to near-equilibrium, and finally to far-from-equilibrium systems. Classical fluctuation theorems, which capture the…
In the last 50 years, equilibrium density functional theory (DFT) has been proven to be a powerful, versatile and predictive approach for the statics and structure of classical particles. This theory can be extended to the nonequilibrium…
Fundamental interactions are either fully or nearly symmetric under time reversal. But macroscopic phenomena have a definite arrow of time. Though there is no convergence on the origin of time's preferential direction, many researchers…
It is widely believed that the underlying reality behind statistical mechanics is a deterministic and unitary time evolution of a many-particle wave function, even though this is in conflict with the irreversible, stochastic nature of…
Nonequilibrium thermodynamics of a general second-order stochastic system is investigated. We prove that at steady state, under inversion of velocities, the condition of time-reversibility over the phase space is equivalent to the…
A broken time-reversal symmetry, i.e. broken detailed balance, is central to non-equilibrium physics and is a prerequisite for life. However, it turns out to be quite challenging to unambiguously define and quantify time-reversal symmetry…
A formulation of the density functional theory is constructed on the foundations of entropic inference. The theory is introduced as an application of maximum entropy for inhomogeneous fluids in thermal equilibrium. It is shown that entropic…
Irreversibility remains one of the least understood concepts in physics. One of the main reasons is the fact that the fundamental laws of classical and quantum physics are time symmetric, whereas macroscopic processes evolve in a preferred…
This thesis deals with the dynamics of irreversible processes within the context of the general theory of relativity. In particular, we address the problem of the 'infinite' speed of propagation of thermal disturbances in a dissipative…
Thermodynamic inference from coarse observations remains a key challenge. Memory, in particular correlations between consecutively observed mesostates, blur signatures of irreversibility and must be accounted for in defining physical…
Some interactions between classical or quantum fields and matter are known to be irreversible processes. Here we associate an entropy to the electromagnetic field from well-known notions of statistical quantum mechanics, in particular the…