Related papers: Making Sense of Gravitational Thermodynamics
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…
Ability of dynamical systems to relax to equilibrium has been investigated since the invention of statistical mechanics, which establishes the connection between dynamics of many-body Hamiltonian systems and phenomenological thermodynamics.…
To understand under which conditions thermodynamics emerges from the microscopic dynamics is the ultimate goal of statistical mechanics. Despite the fact that the theory is more than 100 years old, we are still discussing its foundations…
Gibbs and Boltzmann definitions of temperature agree only in the macroscopic limit. The ambiguity in identifying the equilibrium temperature of a finite sized `small' system exchanging energy with a bath is usually understood as a…
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…
The resource theory of thermal operations, an established model for small-scale thermodynamics, provides an extension of equilibrium thermodynamics to nonequilibrium situations. On a lattice of any dimension with any translation-invariant…
In study of pseudo(quasi)-hermitian operators, the key role is played by the positive-definite metric operator. It enables physical interpretation of the considered systems. In the article, we study the pseudo-hermitian systems with…
The statistical mechanical description of small systems staying in thermal equilibrium with an environment can be achieved by means of the Hamiltonian of mean force. In contrast to the reduced density matrix of an open quantum system, or…
The fact that a temperature and an entropy may be associated with horizons in semi-classical general relativity has led many to suspect that spacetime has microstructure. If this is indeed the case then its description via Riemannian…
Granular and nanoscale materials containing a relatively small number of constituents have been studied to discover how their properties differ from their macroscopic counterparts. These studies are designed to test how far the known…
Thermodynamic principles are often deceptively simple and yet surprisingly powerful. We show how a simple rule, such as the net flow of energy in and out of a moving atom under nonequilibrium steady state condition, can expose the…
Equilibrium statistical mechanics provides a robust framework for characterizing phase transitions in systems whose microsopic dynamics are time-reversible. Efforts to develop and validate theoretical frameworks for time-irreversible,…
Classical thermodynamics is unrivalled in its range of applications and relevance to everyday life. It enables a description of complex systems, made up of microscopic particles, in terms of a small number of macroscopic quantities, such as…
We develop the argument that the Gibbs-von Neumann entropy is the appropriate statistical mechanical generalisation of the thermodynamic entropy, for macroscopic and microscopic systems, whether in thermal equilibrium or not, as a…
Thermodynamical arguments are known to be useful in the construction of physically motivated Lyapunov functionals for nonlinear stability analysis of spatially homogeneous equilibrium steady states in thermodynamically isolated systems.…
This work deals with the physical system governed by a Hamiltonian operator, in two-dimensional space, of spinless charged particles subject to a perpendicular magnetic field B, coupled with a harmonic potential in the context of…
We describe the dynamics and thermodynamics of collisionless particle disks orbiting a massive central body, in the case where the disk mass is small compared to the central mass, the self-gravity of the disk dominates the non-Keplerian…
The mathematical physics of mechanical systems in thermal equilibrium is a well studied, and relatively easy, subject, because the Gibbs distribution is in general an adequate guess for the equilibrium state. On the other hand, the…
We describe recent progress towards deriving the Fundamental Laws of thermodynamics (the 0th, 1st and 2nd Law) from nonequilibrium quantum statistical mechanics in simple, yet physically relevant models. Along the way, we clarify some basic…
Spacetimes with horizons show a resemblance to thermodynamic systems and it is possible to associate the notions of temperature and entropy with them. Several aspects of this connection are reviewed in a manner appropriate for broad…