2015/11/26 by J. Ricardo Arias‐Gonzalez, Arias-Gonzalez, J. Ricardo
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Phase Equilibria and Thermodynamics #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1511.08419
openalex publication_date 2015/11/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We demonstrate that irreversibility arises from the principle of microscopic reversibility and the presence of memory in the time evolution of a single copy of a system driven by a protocol. We introduce microscopic reversibility by using the concept of protocol- and pathway-dependent thermodynamic function, as defined in J.R. Arias-Gonzalez, arXiv:1511.08017 [cond-mat.stat-mech], and memory by using the concept of non-Markovianity, as in J.R. Arias-Gonzalez, arXiv:1511.06139 [cond-mat.stat-mech]. We define work as the change in free energy and heat as the change in entropy for micoscopic, individual pathways of a system subject to a protocol. We find that all non-equilibrium statistics emerge naturally. In particular, we derive most known fluctuation theorems and formulate two others. While the conservation of energy is invoked both at the level of the individual pathway and in ensemble-average processes, the second law of thermodynamics and the time arrow, which are only fulfilled in ensemble-average processes, are shown to be consequences of microscopic reversibility and non-Markovianity.