Entropy as a Metric Generator of Dissipation in Complete Metriplectic Systems

This lecture is a short review on the role entropy plays in those classical dissipative systems whose equations of motion may be expressed via a Leibniz Bracket Algebra (LBA). This means that the time derivative of any physical observable f of the system is calculated by putting this f in a “bracket” together with a “special observable” F, referred to as a Leibniz generator of the dynamics. While conservative dynamics is given an LBA formulation in the Hamiltonian framework, so that F is the Hamiltonian H of the system that generates the motion via classical Poisson brackets or quantum commutation brackets, an LBA formulation can be given to classical dissipative dynamics through the Metriplectic Bracket Algebra (MBA): the conservative component of the dynamics is still generated via Poisson algebra by the total energy H, while S, the entropy of the degrees of freedom statistically encoded in friction, generates dissipation via a metric bracket. The motivation of expressing through a bracket algebra and a motion-generating function F is to endow the theory of the system at hand with all the powerful machinery of Hamiltonian systems in terms of symmetries that become evident and readable. Here a (necessarily partial) overview of the types of systems subject to MBA formulation is presented, and the physical meaning of the quantity S involved in each is discussed. Here the aim is to review the different MBAs for isolated systems in a synoptic way. At the end of this collection of examples, the fact that dissipative dynamics may be constructed also in the absence of friction with microscopic degrees of freedom is stressed. This reasoning is a hint to introduce dissipation at a more fundamental level.