Microscopic Irreversibility
نویسنده
چکیده
First, I will recount the substance of several important conversations I had with Ilya Prigogine over the years. There is no doubt in my mind that Professor Prigogine firmly believed in the underlying stochasticity of the universe. Second, I will summarize my curiosity about the principle of detailed balance. In my opinion, so far it has always been put in by hand. Third, I will advance my own theory of microscopic irreversibility, that is, irreversibility at the quantum level. This involves new concepts of probability preference and probability violation. A manifestation of this irreversibility may be seen during emission of bound-free photons during field-matter interactions. Entropy increase is tied to radiation increase, and the notion of heat bath becomes light bath.
منابع مشابه
Macroscopic irreversibility and microscopic paradox: A Constructal law analysis of atoms as open systems
The relation between macroscopic irreversibility and microscopic reversibility is a present unsolved problem. Constructal law is introduced to develop analytically the Einstein's, Schrödinger's, and Gibbs' considerations on the interaction between particles and thermal radiation (photons). The result leads to consider the atoms and molecules as open systems in continuous interaction with flows ...
متن کاملTime Irreversibility Problem and Functional Formulation of Classical Mechanics
The time irreversibility problem is the dichotomy of the reversible microscopic dynamics and the irreversible macroscopic physics. This problem was considered by Boltzmann, Poincaré, Bogolyubov and many other authors and though some researchers claim that the problem is solved, it deserves a further study. In this paper an attempt is performed of the following solution of the irreversibility pr...
متن کاملIrreversibility and the Arrow of Time in a Quenched Quantum System.
Irreversibility is one of the most intriguing concepts in physics. While microscopic physical laws are perfectly reversible, macroscopic average behavior has a preferred direction of time. According to the second law of thermodynamics, this arrow of time is associated with a positive mean entropy production. Using a nuclear magnetic resonance setup, we measure the nonequilibrium entropy produce...
متن کاملEntropy production in nonequilibrium steady states: a different approach and an exactly solvable canonical model.
We discuss entropy production in nonequilibrium steady states by focusing on paths obtained by sampling at regular (small) intervals, instead of sampling on each change of the system's state. This allows us to directly study entropy production in systems with microscopic irreversibility. The two sampling methods are equivalent otherwise, and the fluctuation theorem also holds for the different ...
متن کاملTowards physical dynamic tolerance: an approach to resolve the conflict between free will and physical determinism.
This paper attempts to resolve the conflict between free will and determinism. The problem is approached by demonstrating that: (a) some well-established experimental observations indicate that irreversibility persists at the molecular level, (b) microscopic reversibility is not fully compatible with macroscopic irreversibility, (c) an overall consistency can be maintained if microscopic revers...
متن کامل