Related papers: Clausius' theorem and the Second law in the proces…

The second law of thermodynamics is a fundamental law of Nature. It is almost universally associated with the Clausius inequality that lower bounds a change in entropy by the ratio of supplied heat and temperature. However, this result…

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…

For a small driven system coupled strongly to a heat bath, internal energy and exchanged heat are identified such that they obey the usual additive form of the first law. By identifying this exchanged heat with the entropy change of the…

We initially prepare a quantum linear oscillator weakly coupled to a bath in equilibrium at an arbitrary temperature. We disturb this system by varying a Hamiltonian parameter of the coupled oscillator, namely, either its spring constant or…

This paper has been withdrawn by the author. For the reason, see the bottom paragraph of this abstract. By generalizing Tasaki's work on the second law of thermodynamics for an adiabatic process between two equilibrium states of a…

The second law of thermodynamics in nonextensive statistical mechanics is discussed in the quantum regime. Making use of the convexity property of the generalized relative entropy associated with the Tsallis entropy indexed by q, Clausius'…

It is shown that the structure of thermodynamics is "form invariant", when it is derived using maximum entropy principle for various choices of entropy and even beyond equilibrium. By the form invariance of thermodynamics, it is meant that…

Equilibrium thermodynamics is combined with Jarzynski's irreversible work theorem to quantify the excess entropy produced by irreversible processes. The resulting rectified form of the second law parallels the first law, in the sense that…

Materials that are constantly driven out of thermodynamic equilibrium, such as active and living systems, typically violate the Einstein relation. This may arise from active contributions to particle fluctuations which are unrelated to the…

We consider a quantum linear oscillator coupled at an arbitrary strength to a bath at an arbitrary temperature. We find an exact closed expression for the oscillator density operator. This state is non-canonical but can be shown to be…

The irreversible entropy increase described by the second law of thermodynamics is fundamentally tied to thermalization and the emergence of equilibrium. In the first part of our work (Ref: arXiv.2503.04152), we constructed an isolated gas…

We study entropy production in nanoscale devices, which are coupled to finite heat baths. This situation is of growing experimental relevance, but most theoretical approaches rely on a formulation of the second law valid only for infinite…

Thermodynamics allows the application of Statistical Mechanics to finite and even small systems. As surface effects cannot be scaled away, one has to be careful with the standard arguments of splitting a system into two or bringing two…

We generalize the second law of thermodynamics in its maximum work formulation for a nonequilibrium initial distribution. It is found that in an isothermal process, the Boltzmann relative entropy (H-function) is not just a Lyapunov function…

In a previous work (M. Campisi. Stud. Hist. Phil. M. P. 36 (2005) 275-290) we have addressed the mechanical foundations of equilibrium thermodynamics on the basis of the Generalized Helmholtz Theorem. It was found that the volume entropy…

This article is a short version of a longer article to appear in Physics Reports (cond-mat/9708200). The essential postulates of classical thermodynamics are formulated, from which the second law is deduced as the principle of increase of…

It has long been known that, fundamentally different from a large body of rarefied gas, when a Knudsen gas is immersed in a thermal bath, it may never reach thermal equilibrium. The root cause is nonchaoticity: as the particle-particle…

The essential postulates of classical thermodynamics are formulated, from which the second law is deduced as the principle of increase of entropy in irreversible adiabatic processes that take one equilibrium state to another. The entropy…

Second law of thermodynamics imposes that in any thermodynamic process the entropy production must be nonnegative. In continuum physics such a requirement is fulfilled by postulating the constitutive equations which represent the material…

The problem of temperature in nonextensive statistical mechanics is studied. Considering the first law of thermodynamics and a "quasi-reversible process", it is shown that the Tsallis entropy becomes the Clausius entropy if the inverse of…