Related papers: Irreversibility time scale
The second law of thermodynamics implies a relationship between the net entropy export by the Earth and its internal irreversible entropy production. The application of this constraint for the purpose of understanding Earth's climate is…
We first present open questions related to the foundations of thermodynamics and statistical physics. We then argue that in principle one can not have "closed systems", and that a universal background should exist. We propose that 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…
We prove the equivalence among symmetricity, time reversibility, and zero entropy production of the stationary solutions of linear stochastic differential equations. A sufficient and necessary reversibility condition expressed in terms of…
The question of how irreversibility can emerge as a generic phenomena when the underlying mechanical theory is reversible has been a long-standing fundamental problem for both classical and quantum mechanics. We describe a mechanism for the…
The transition probability for time-dependent unitary evolution is invariant under the reversal of protocols just as in the classical Liouvillian dynamics. In this article, we generalize the expression of microscopic reversibility to…
This paper presents an {\it ab initio} derivation of the expression given by irreversible thermodynamics for the rate of entropy production for different classes of diffusive processes. The first class are Lorentz gases, where…
The 2nd law of thermodynamics yields an irreversible increase in entropy until thermal equilibrium is achieved. This irreversible increase is often assumed to require large and complex systems to emerge from the reversible microscopic laws…
The second law of thermodynamics points to the existence of an `arrow of time', along which entropy only increases. This arises despite the time-reversal symmetry (TRS) of the microscopic laws of nature. Within quantum theory, TRS underpins…
Transitions from reversible to irreversible or fluctuating states above a critical density and shear amplitude have been extensively studied in non-thermal cyclically sheared suspensions and amorphous solids. Here, we propose that the same…
We study the sum of first passage times along an arbitrary cycle made up of N>2 states of a small physical system. We show that, if the system is at thermodynamic equilibrium, this sum follows the same probability distribution regardless of…
Irreversibility and acausality of a sub-system are established in exactly soluble harmonic models with reversible and causal dynamics. It is shown that initial conditions, imposed on some dynamical degrees of freedom may break time reversal…
All of the basic microsopic physical laws are time reversible. In contrast, the second law of thermodynamics, which is a macroscopic physical representation of the world, is able to describe irreversible processes in an isolated system…
Fluctuation theorems, which have been developed over the past 15 years, have resulted in fundamental breakthroughs in our understanding of how irreversibility emerges from reversible dynamics, and have provided new statistical mechanical…
Fluctuation theorems make use of time reversal to make predictions about entropy production in many-body systems far from thermal equilibrium. Here we review the wide variety of distinct, but interconnected, relations that have been derived…
We generalize nonequilibrium integral equalities to situations involving absolutely irreversible processes for which the forward-path probability vanishes and the entropy production diverges, rendering conventional integral fluctuation…
In the previous papers (Kui\'{c} et al. in Found Phys 42:319-339, 2012; Kui\'{c} in arXiv:1506.02622, 2015), it was demonstrated that applying the principle of maximum information entropy by maximizing the conditional information entropy,…
One of the important questions in statistical mechanics is how irreversibility (time's arrow) occurs when Newton equations of motion are time reversal invariant. One objection to irreversibility is based on Poincar\'e's recursion theorem: a…
We establish a general lower bound for the entropy production rate (EPR) based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence and the Logarithmic-Sobolev constant that characterizes the time-scale of relaxation. This bound can be considered as an…
Master equation could be applied to model various kinds of biochemical systems. A general theory for its time-dependent nonequilibrium thermodynamics is rigorously derived. We not only introduce a concept of general internal energy, but…