Related papers: Challenges about entropy
Recently, a thermodynamic definition of time has been introduced. This definition is useful to find approach some open problems in physics. But, it was obtained by a phenomenological approach and a logical inconsistency appears in the…
Many physicists think that the maximum entropy formalism is a straightforward application of Bayesian statistical ideas to statistical mechanics. Some even say that statistical mechanics is just the general Bayesian logic of inductive…
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,…
We analyze cosmology assuming unitary quantum mechanics, using a tripartite partition into system, observer and environment degrees of freedom. This generalizes the second law of thermodynamics to "The system's entropy can't decrease unless…
For a dynamical system far from equilibrium, one has to deal with empirical probabilities defined through time-averages, and the main problem is then how to formulate an appropriate statistical thermodynamics. The common answer is that the…
The standard assumption for the equilibrium microcanonical state in quantum mechanics, that the system must be in one of the energy eigenstates, is weakened so as to allow superpositions of states. The weakened form of the microcanonical…
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 short book is an elementary course on entropy, leading up to a calculation of the entropy of hydrogen gas at standard temperature and pressure. Topics covered include information, Shannon entropy and Gibbs entropy, the principle of…
We examine the consequences of a universe with a non-constant cosmological term in Einstein's equations and find that the Bianchi identities reduce to the first law of thermodynamics when cosmological term is identified as being…
A great many observables seen in intermediate energy heavy ion collisions can be explained on the basis of statistical equilibrium. Calculations based on statistical equilibrium can be implemented in microcanonical ensemble (energy and…
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…
The microcanonical ensemble is in important physical situations different from the canonical one even in the thermodynamic limit. In contrast to the canonical ensemble it does not suppress spatially inhomogeneous configurations like phase…
Cosmologists wish to explain how our Universe, in all its complexity, could ever have come about. For that, we assess the number of states in our Universe now. This plays the role of entropy in thermodynamics of the Universe, and reveals…
A multicanonical formalism is introduced to describe statistical equilibrium of complex systems exhibiting a hierarchy of time and length scales, where the hierarchical structure is described as a set of nested "internal heat reservoirs"…
Our knowledge of quantum mechanics can satisfactorily describe simple, microscopic systems, but is yet to explain the macroscopic everyday phenomena we observe. Here we aim to shed some light on the quantum-to-classical transition as seen…
In ordinary Boltzmann-Gibbs thermostatistics, the relative entropy expression plays the role of generalized free energy, providing the difference between the off-equilibrium and equilibrium free energy terms associated with Boltzmann-Gibbs…
The routine definitions of both entropy, and differential entropy show inconsistencies that make them not reciprocally coherent. We propose a few possible modifications of these quantities so that 1) they no longer show incongruities, 2)…
The chemical reactions are very complex, and include oscillation, condensation, catalyst and self-organization, etc. In these case changes of entropy may increase or decrease. The second law of thermodynamics is based on an isolated system…
Thermodynamics can be formulated in either of two approaches, the phenomenological approach, which refers to the macroscopic properties of systems, and the statistical approach, which describes systems in terms of their microscopic…
In this paper, we consider general statistical ensembles and compute logarithmic corrections to the microcanonical entropy resulting due to thermodynamic fluctuations which are controlled by the boundary conditions, i.e. due to choice of…