Related papers: Coevolution. Extending Prigogine Theorem

Despite the importance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is not absolute. Statistical mechanics implies that, given sufficient time, systems near equilibrium will spontaneously fluctuate into lower-entropy states, locally reversing…

Prevalence of cooperation within groups of selfish individuals is puzzling in that it contradicts with the basic premise of natural selection. Favoring players with higher fitness, the latter is key for understanding the challenges faced by…

The approach to a substantiation of thermodynamics is offered. A conservative system of interacting elements, which is not in equilibrium, is used as a model. This system is then split into small subsystems that are accepted as being in…

Isolated quantum systems follow the unitary evolution, which guarantees the full many body state always keeps a constant entropy as its initial one. In comparison, the local subsystems exhibit relaxation behavior and evolve towards certain…

The fact that a temperature and an entropy may be associated with horizons in semi-classical general relativity has led many to suspect that spacetime has microstructure. If this is indeed the case then its description via Riemannian…

Non-equilibrium processes in Schottky systems generate by projection onto the equilibrium subspace reversible accompanying processes for which the non-equilibrium variables are functions of the equilibrium ones. The embedding theorem which…

Phase separation routinely occurs in both living and synthetic systems. These phases are often complex and distinguished by features including crystallinity, nematic order, and a host of other nonconserved order parameters. For systems at…

Entanglement within a given device provides a potential resource for quantum information processing. Entanglement between system and environment leads to decoherence (thus suppressing non-classical features within the system) but also opens…

A single mechanism, endemic to the standard model of physics, is proposed to explain wavefunction collapse, classical motion, dissipation, equilibration, and the transition from pure quantum mechanics through open system decoherence to the…

Extremal principles are fundamental in our interpretation of phenomena in nature. One of the best known examples is the second law of thermodynamics, governing most physical and chemical systems and stating the continuous increase of…

We introduce the idea of weakly coherent collisional models, where the elements of an environment interacting with a system of interest are prepared in states that are approximately thermal, but have an amount of coherence proportional to a…

We develop an axiomatic reconstruction of thermodynamics based entirely on two primitive components: a description of what aspects of a system are observed and a reference measure that encodes the underlying descriptive convention. These…

The classical Second Law of Thermodynamics demands that an isolated system evolves with a non-diminishing entropy. This holds as well in quantum mechanics if the evolution of the energy-isolated system can be described by a unital quantum…

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics has long been an area of substantial interest to ecologists because most fundamental biological processes, such as protein synthesis and respiration, are inherently energy-consuming. Microbial communities are…

A general nonequilibrium thermodynamic theory is developed for time-dependent Langevin dynamics, starting from the common definition of nonequilibrium Gibbs entropy. It is shown that the notations appearing in the First and the Second Law…

Statistical mechanics is founded on the assumption that all accessible configurations of a system are equally likely. This requires dynamics that explore all states over time, known as ergodic dynamics. In isolated quantum systems, however,…

We consider relaxation of an isolated system to the equilibrium using detailed balance condition and Onsager's fluctuation approximation. There is a small deviation from the equilibrium in two parameters. For this system, explicit…

Stochastic thermodynamics as reviewed here systematically provides a framework for extending the notions of classical thermodynamics like work, heat and entropy production to the level of individual trajectories of well-defined…

For continuous-space diffusion processes, there is a strong connection between conservative forces and entropy production. For a given time evolution of the system's state, the entropy production is minimized when the system is driven by a…

Exposing a solution to a temperature gradient can lead to the accumulation of particles on either the cold or warm side. This phenomenon, known as thermophoresis, has been discovered more than a century ago, and yet its microscopic origin…