Related papers: A Fresh Look at Entropy and the Second Law of Ther…
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…
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…
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…
Deriving the laws of thermodynamics from a microscopic picture is a central quest of statistical mechanics. This tutorial focuses on the derivation of the first and second law for closed and open quantum systems far from equilibrium, where…
In the scientific and engineering literature, the second law of thermodynamics is expressed in terms of the behavior of entropy in reversible and irreversible processes. According to the prevailing statistical mechanics interpretation the…
The microscopic explanation of entropy has been challenged from both experimental and theoretical point of view. The expression of entropy is derived from the first law of thermodynamics indicating that entropy or the second law of…
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…
Evidence implies that basic laws of thermodynamics must be tested by experiments. In this paper, an experiment is designed to measure the entropy of a system with at least one known (measurable) equation of state, especially the gas…
This article describes the third law of thermodynamics. This law is often poorly known and is often decried, or even considered optional and irrelevant to describe weather and climate phenomena. This, however, is inaccurate and contrary to…
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 -…
It exists a large class of systems for which the traditional notion of extensivity breaks down. From experimental examples we induce two general hypothesis concerning such systems. In the first the existence of an internal coordinate system…
The second law of thermodynamics for adiabatic operations -- constraints on state transitions in closed systems under external control -- is one of the fundamental principles of thermodynamics. On the other hand, it is recently established…
The second law of classical thermodynamics, based on the positivity of the entropy production, only holds for deterministic processes. Therefore the Second Law in stochastic quantum thermodynamics may not hold. By making a fundamental…
The second law of nonequilibrium thermodynamics within the open system paradigm (a small system coupled to one or multiple baths) is derived. This is done by showing positivity of entropy production for arbitrary Hamiltonian dynamics for a…
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…
This paper is the second part of a previous paper (Marquet, 2019) dealing with the need to define the entropy with an absolute way, by using the third law of thermodynamics. In this second part it is shown that there is a need and interest…
The second law of thermodynamics is discussed and reformulated from a quantum information theoretic perspective for open quantum systems using relative entropy. Specifically, the relative entropy of a quantum state with respect to…
A definition of the thermodynamic entropy based on the time-dependent probability distribution of the macroscopic variables is developed. When a constraint in a composite system is released, the probability distribution for the new…
Entropy is the distinguishing and most important concept of our efforts to understand and regularize our observations of a very large class of natural phenomena, and yet, it is one of the most contentious concepts of physics. In this…
Microcanonical thermodynamics allows the application of statistical mechanics both to finite and even small systems and also to the largest, self-gravitating ones. However, one must reconsider the fundamental principles of statistical…