Related papers: Boltzmann Bridges
Are your perceptions, memories and observational data, a statistical fluctuation out of the thermal equilibrium of the universe, having no correlation with the actual past state of the universe? Arguments are given in the literature for and…
The essence of the second law of classical thermodynamics is the `entropy principle' which asserts the existence of an additive and extensive entropy function, S, that is defined for all equilibrium states of thermodynamic systems and whose…
Regardless of studies and debates over a century, the statistical origin of the second law of thermodynamics still remains illusive. One essential obstacle is the lack of a proper theoretical formalism for non-equilibrium entropy. Here I…
The second law of thermodynamics is asymmetric with respect to time as it says that the entropy of the universe must have been lower in the past and will be higher in the future. How this time-asymmetric law arises from the time-symmetric…
The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system can only increase over time. This appears to conflict with the reversible evolution of isolated quantum systems under the Schr\"odinger equation, which preserves…
Unlike most other laws of nature, the second law of thermodynamics is of a statistical nature, according to Boltzmann, meaning that its reliability arises from the vast number of particles present in macroscopic systems. This means that…
People are well aware that, inherently, certain small-scale nonchaotic particle movements are not governed by thermodynamics. Usually, such phenomena are studied by kinetic theory and their energy properties are considered "trivial". In…
We have presented first an axiomatic derivation of Boltzmann entropy on the basis of two axioms consistent with two basic properties of thermodynamic entropy. We have then studied the relationship between Boltzmann entropy and information…
We seek here to unify the second law of thermodynamics with the other laws, or at least to put up a law behind the second law of thermodynamics. Assuming no fine tuning, concretely by a random Hamiltonian, we argue just from equations of…
In statistical thermodynamics the 2nd law is properly spelled out in terms of conditioned probabilities. As such it makes the statement, that `entropy increases with time' without preferring a time direction. In this paper I try to explain…
A colloquial interpretation of entropy is that it is the knowledge gained upon learning the outcome of a random experiment. Conditional entropy is then interpreted as the knowledge gained upon learning the outcome of one random experiment…
The universal validity of the second law of thermodynamics is widely attributed to a finely tuned initial condition of the universe. This creates a problem: why is the universe atypical? We suggest that the problem is an artefact created by…
In a macroscopic (quantum or classical) Hamiltonian system, we prove the second law of thermodynamics in the forms of the minimum work principle and the law of entropy increase, under the assumption that the initial state is described by a…
Boltzmann's principle S=k ln W allows to extend equilibrium thermo-statistics to ``Small'' systems without invoking the thermodynamic limit. The clue is to base statistical probability on ensemble averaging and not on time averaging. It is…
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Ludwig Boltzmann explained how irreversible macroscopic laws, in particular the second law of thermodynamics, originate in the time-reversible laws of microscopic physics. Boltzmann's analysis,…
Experimental and theoretical results about entropy limits for macroscopic and single-particle systems are reviewed. It is clarified when it is possible to speak about a quantum of entropy, given by the Boltzmann constant k, and about a…
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…
The development of stochastic thermodynamics during the last decades prompted the discovery of novel nonequilibrium relations refining our understanding of the second law in small fluctuating systems and its connection with information…
Boltzmann's struggle with a derivation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is sketched. So is his first derivation of the connection between entropy and probability in 1877. Planck's derivation and quantum mechanical modifications of…
We derive a generalization of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that uses Bayesian updates to explicitly incorporate the effects of a measurement of a system at some point in its evolution. By allowing an experimenter's knowledge to be…