相关论文: Jensen Inequality and the Second Law

We treat a quantum mechanical system with certain general properties which are expected to be common in macroscopic quantum systems. Starting from a PURE initial state (which may not describe an equilibrium) in which energy is mildly…

The status of heat and work in nonequilibrium thermodynamics is quite confusing and non-unique at present with conflicting interpretations even after a long history of the first law in terms of exchange heat and work, and is far from…

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases (or does not change) by time in an isolated system. As microscopic physical laws are reversible, the origin of irreversibility is not straightforward. Although the outcome of a…

Thermodynamics, and in particular its first law, is of fundamental importance to Science, and therefore of great general interest to all physicists. The first law, although undoubtedly true, and believed by everyone to be true because of…

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…

We relate Newton's Second Law with the Second Law of Thermodynamics through the analysis of a simple model introducing a dynamic pressure concept. From this analyses we can clarify some conceptual problems resulting from several concepts of…

We present a general framework for systems which are prepared in a non-stationary non-equilibrium state in the absence of any perturbation, and which are then further driven through the application of a time-dependent perturbation. We…

We show that the conventional Jarzynski equality does not hold for a system prepared in a microcanonical ensemble. We derive a modified equality that connects microcanonical work fluctuations to entropy production, in an analogous way to…

Small thermodynamic systems exhibit peculiar behavior different from that observed in long-scale systems. Non-equilibrium processes taking place in those systems are strongly influenced by the presence of fluctuations which can be large.…

A fluctuation theorem is proved for the macroscopic currents of a system in a nonequilibrium steady state, by using Schnakenberg network theory. The theorem can be applied, in particular, in reaction systems where the affinities or…

The existence of fluctuations of temperature has been a somewhat controversial topic in thermodynamics but nowadays it is recognized that they must be taken into account in small, finite systems. Although for nonequilibrium steady states…

In textbooks on statistical mechanics, one finds often arguments based on classical mechanics, phase space and ergodicity in order to justify the second law of thermodynamics. However, the basic equations of motion of classical mechanics…

The second law of thermodynamics, which asserts the non-negativity of the average total entropy production of a combined system and its environment, is a direct consequence of applying Jensen's inequality to a fluctuation relation. It is…

It is argued the the idea of a single temperature-like variable, introduced in [1], which enters a generalized second law for Markovian open system in non-equilibrium environment is not sufficient for a consistent and useful thermodynamic…

Recent research on the thermodynamic arrow of time, at the microscopic scale, has questioned the universality of its direction. Theoretical studies showed that quantum correlations can be used to revert the natural heat flow (from the hot…

Equilibrium is characterized by its fundamental properties such as the detailed balance, the fluctuation-dissipation relation, and no heat dissipation. Based on the stochastic thermodynamics, we show that these three properties are…

Universality of classical thermodynamics rests on the central limit theorem, due to which, measurements of thermal fluctuations are unable to reveal detailed information regarding the microscopic structure of a macroscopic body. When small…

Jarzynski's theorem is a well-known equality in statistical mechanics, which relates fluctuations in the work performed during a non-equilibrium transformation of a system, to the free-energy difference between two equilibrium ensembles. In…

For processes during which a macroscopic system exchanges no heat with its surroundings, the second law of thermodynamics places two lower bounds on the amount of work performed on the system: a weak bound, expressed in terms of a…

This paper proposes a new sharpened version of the Jensen's inequality. The proposed new bound is simple and insightful, is broadly applicable by imposing minimum assumptions, and provides fairly accurate result in spite of its simple form.…