Related papers: Feeding upon negative entropy in a thermal-equilib…
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy production in macroscopic systems is non-negative, reaching zero only at thermodynamic equilibrium. As a corollary, this implies that the state trajectory of macroscopic systems is…
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…
Statistical mechanics descriptions of the second law of thermodynamics generally imply point-like particles driven by a dissipative overall mechanism for their simultaneous time-evolution. As the number of involved particles grows larger,…
Thermodynamics allows the application of Statistical Mechanics to finite and even small systems. As surface effects cannot be scaled away, one has to be careful with the standard arguments of splitting a system into two or bringing two…
A microscopic definition of the thermodynamic entropy in an isolated quantum system must satisfy (i) additivity, (ii) extensivity and (iii) the second law of thermodynamics. We show that the diagonal entropy, which is the Shannon entropy in…
The example provided in the comment [arXiv:0803.2241] concerns a situation where the system is initially at negative temperature. It is known that in such cases the Law of Entropy Decrease holds. Nevertheless, this does not challenge the…
For a small driven system coupled strongly to a heat bath, internal energy and exchanged heat are identified such that they obey the usual additive form of the first law. By identifying this exchanged heat with the entropy change of the…
In quantum statistical mechanics, equilibrium states have been shown to be the typical states for a system that is entangled with its environment, suggesting a possible identification between thermodynamic and von Neumann entropies. In this…
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system is non-decreasing. Discussing the Second Law in the quantum world poses new challenges and provides new opportunities, involving fundamental…
The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system is almost always increasing. We propose combinatorial formalizations of the second law and explore their conditions of possibilities.
The second law of thermodynamics is a fundamental law of Nature. It is almost universally associated with the Clausius inequality that lower bounds a change in entropy by the ratio of supplied heat and temperature. However, this result…
For macroscopic systems, the second law of thermodynamics establishes an inequality between the amount of work performed on a system in contact with a thermal reservoir, and the change in its free energy. For microscopic systems, this…
Isoenergetic thermalization amongst $n$ bodies is a well-known irreversible process, bringing the bodies to a common temperature $T_F$ and leading to a rise in the total entropy of the bodies. We express this change in entropy using the…
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…
Time-asymmetric behavior as embodied in the second law of thermodynamics is observed in {\it individual macroscopic} systems. It can be understood as arising naturally from time-symmetric microscopic laws when account is taken of a) the…
In our derivation of the second law of thermodynamics from the relation of adiabatic accessibility of equilibrium states we stressed the importance of being able to scale a system's size without changing its intrinsic properties. This…
Macroscopic nonextensive thermodynamics is studied without recourse to microscopic statistical mechanics. It is shown that if entropy is nonextensive, the concept of physical temperature introduced through the generalized zeroth law of…
The second law of thermodynamics states that for a thermally isolated system entropy never decreases. Most physical processes we observe in nature involve variations of macroscopic quantities over spatial and temporal scales much larger…
The limits of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which reigns undisputed in the macroscopic world, are investigated at the mesoscopic level, corresponding to spatial dimensions of a few microns. An extremely simple isolated system, modeled…
The example of macroscopic thermodynamical system violating the Clausius inequality is presented.