Contents 1. Introduction: On the nature and importance of thermodynamic laws 2. Thermodynamic systems and their description 2.1.

We consider the question of the existence of a generalized H-theorem in the context of the variational method in the information-theoretical approach that generates the nonequilibrium statistical operator formalism. After brie y reviewing how the latter provides mechano-statistical foundations for phenomenological irreversible thermodynamics, the socalled Informational Statistical Thermodynamic...

The year 2015 marked the 150th anniversary of “entropy” as a concept in classical thermodynamics. Despite its central role in the mathematical formulation of the Second Law and most of classical thermodynamics, its physical meaning continues to be elusive and confusing. This is especially true when we seek a reconstruction of the classical thermodynamics of a system from the statistical behavio...

05.90 +m Other topics in statistical physics and thermodynamics 36.20 Macromolecules and polymeric molecules 1

Black holes are thermodynamic objects, but despite recent progress, the ultimate statistical mechanical origin of black hole temperature and entropy remains mysterious. Here I summarize an approach in which the entropy is viewed as arising from “would-be pure gauge” degrees of freedom that become dynamical at the horizon. For the (2+1)-dimensional black hole, these degrees of freedom can be cou...

Polymer quantum systems are mechanical models quantized similarly as loop quantum gravity. It is actually in quantizing gravity that the polymer term holds proper as the quantum geometry excitations yield a reminiscent of a polymer material. In such an approach both non-singular cosmological models and a microscopic basis for the entropy of some black holes have arisen. Also important physical ...

The purpose of this work is to discuss recent progress in deriving the fundamental laws of thermodynamics (0, 1 and 2-law) from nonequilibrium quantum statistical mechanics. Basic thermodynamic notions are clarified and different reversible and irreversible thermodynamic processes are studied from the point of view of quantum statistical mechanics. Special emphasis is put on new adiabatic theor...

It is now very well understood in philosophy that the relationships that related but distinct theories bear to one another is a matter of enormous complexity. Whatever the relationship is between a theory and another that somehow or other “grounds” it, the terms ‘reduction’ and ‘supervenience’ and ‘emergence’ are all so broad in their sweep that to say that one theory reduces to another, is sup...

One finds, in Maxwell’s writings on thermodynamics and statistical physics, a conception of the nature of these subjects that differs in interesting ways from the way that they are usually conceived. In particular, though—in agreement with the currently accepted view—Maxwell maintains that the second law of thermodynamics, as originally conceived, cannot be strictly true, the replacement he pro...

We discuss the connection between different entropies introduced for black hole. It is demonstrated on the two-dimensional example that the (quantum) thermodynamical entropy of a hole coincides (including UV-finite terms) with its statisticalmechanical entropy calculated according to ’t Hooft and regularized by Pauli-Villars. PACS number(s): 04.60.+n, 12.25.+e, 97.60.Lf, 11.10.Gh ∗ e-mail: serg...