2005/07/19 by Elias P. Gyftopoulos, Gyftopoulos, Elias P., Gian Paolo Beretta +1 · 1 voice
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0507187
arxiv created 2005/07/19 · openalex publication_date 2005/07/19 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In the scientific and engineering literature, the second law of thermodynamics is expressed in terms of the behavior of entropy in reversible and irreversible processes. According to the prevailing statistical mechanics interpretation the entropy is viewed as a nonphysical statistical attribute, a measure of either disorder in a system, or lack of information about the system, or erasure of information collected about the system, and a plethora of analytic expressions are proposed for the various measures. In this paper, we present two expositions of thermodynamics (both 'revolutionary' in the sense of Thomas Kuhn with respect to conventional statistical mechanics and traditional expositions of thermodynamics) that apply to all systems (both macroscopic and microscopic, including single particle or single spin systems), and to all states (thermodynamic or stable equilibrium, nonequilibrium, and other states).