Callen's Adiabatic Piston and the Limits of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

2004/10/08 by B. Crosignani, Bruno Crosignani, Paolo Di Porto +4
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Classical Physics (physics.class-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #General Physics (physics.gen-ph) #Phase Equilibria and Thermodynamics #physics.class-ph #physics.gen-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.physics/0410050

17 pages, 4 figures. Revised version

openalex publication_date 2004/10/08 · arxiv created 2006/06/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The limits of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which reigns undisputed in the macroscopic world, are investigated at the mesoscopic level, corresponding to spatial dimensions of a few microns. An extremely simple isolated system, modeled after Callen's adiabatic piston, [1] can, under appropriate conditions, be described as a self-organizing Brownian motor and shown to exhibit a perpetuum mobile behavior.

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