Suppose we flow through an adsorption or chromatograph column so fast that the adsorption is not at equilibrium at a given point in the column. This departure from equilibrium could be either due to diffusion resistance within the porous particles of the column or due to kinetic limitation of the adsorption process. Alternatively, you may wish to separate different size macromolecules by the di...

The coexistence of several schools in non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a reality.At the beginning of the 21st century, the thermodynamics of systems far from. However, it turns out that many nonequilibrium phenomena can be described.An alternate evolutionary hypothesis is discussed: non-equilibrium. Literature on non-equilibrium thermodynamics and its relationship to evolutionary.The online ve...

This is a brief review of recently derived relations describing the behaviour of systems far from equilibrium. They include the Fluctuation Theorem, Jarzynski’s and Crooks’ equalities, and an extended form of the Second Principle for general steady states. They are very general and their proofs are, in most cases, disconcertingly simple.

These lecture notes give a basic introduction to the physics of phase transitions under non-equilibrium conditions. The notes start with a general introduction to non-equilibrium statistical mechanics followed by four parts. The first one discusses the universality class of directed percolation, which plays a similar role as the Ising model in equilibrium statistical physics. The second one giv...

We employ the influence functional technique to trace out the photonic contribution from full quantum electrodynamics. The reduced density matrix propagator then is constructed for the electron field. We discuss the role of time-dependent renormalization in the propagator and focus our attention to the possibility of obtaining a dynamically induced superselection rule. As a final application of...

Statistical mechanics provides a well-established link between microscopic equilibrium states and thermodynamics. If one considers systems out of equilibrium, the link between microscopic dynamical properties and nonequilibrium macroscopic states is more difficult to establish [1,2]. For systems lying near equilibrium, linear response theory provides a route to derive linear macroscopic laws an...

The mathematical physics of mechanical systems in thermal equilibrium is a well studied, and relatively easy, subject, because the Gibbs distribution is in general an adequate guess for the equilibrium state. On the other hand, the mathematical physics of non-equilibrium systems, such as that of a chain of masses connected with springs to two (infinite) heat reservoirs is more difficult, precis...

By designating a system as “near equilibrium”, we mean that the system is perturbed from its equilibrium state by some time-dependent external force f(t). The external force is deterministic, not random; typical examples include mechanical forces and forces due to an applied electric or magnetic field. This force drives the expectation values of some of the system’s observables away from their ...

Local Shannon entropy lies at the heart of modern thermodynamics, with much discussion of trajectory-dependent entropy production. When taken at both boundaries of a process in phase space, it reproduces the second law of thermodynamics over a finite time interval for small scale systems. However, given that entropy is an ensemble property, it has never been clear how one can assign such a quan...