2014/07/28 by Jiří Pešek, Pešek, Jiří
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Mathematical Physics (math-ph) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.stat-mech #math-ph #math.MP
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1407.7434
178 pages, 19 figures, 2 tables, PHD thesis; defended in October 2013 at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University in Prague
arxiv created 2014/07/28 · arxiv updated 2014/07/29
This thesis is devoted to the theoretical study of slow thermodynamic processes in non-equilibrium stochastic systems. Its main result is a physically and mathematically consistent construction of relevant thermodynamic quantities in the quasistatic limit for a large class of non-equilibrium models. As an application of general methods a natural non-equilibrium generalization of heat capacity is introduced and its properties are analyzed in detail, including an anomalous far-from-equilibrium behavior. The developed methods are further applied to the related problem of time-scale separation where they enable to describe the effective dynamics of both slow and fast degrees of freedom in a more precise way.