Entropy statistical description

The plan of this chapter is the following. Section II gives a summary of the phenomenology of irreversible processes and set up the stage for the results of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics to follow. In Section III, it is explained that time asymmetry is compatible with microreversibility. In Section IV, the concept of Pollicott-Ruelle resonance is presented and shown to break the time-reversal symmetry in the statistical description of the time evolution of nonequilibrium relaxation toward the state of thermodynamic equilibrium. This concept is applied in Section V to the construction of the hydrodynamic modes of diffusion at the microscopic level of description in the phase space of Newton s equations. This framework allows us to derive ab initio entropy production as shown in Section VI. In Section VII, the concept of Pollicott-Ruelle resonance is also used to obtain the different transport coefficients, as well as the rates of various kinetic processes in the framework of the escape-rate theory. The time asymmetry in the dynamical randomness of nonequilibrium systems and the fluctuation theorem for the currents are presented in Section VIII. Conclusions and perspectives in biology are discussed in Section IX. 

Various equations of state have been developed to treat association ia supercritical fluids. Two of the most often used are the statistical association fluid theory (SAET) (60,61) and the lattice fluid hydrogen bonding model (LEHB) (62). These models iaclude parameters that describe the enthalpy and entropy of association. The most detailed description of association ia supercritical water has been obtained usiag molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo computer simulations (63), but this requires much larger amounts of computer time (64—66). 

There are three different approaches to a thermodynamic theory of continuum that can be distinguished. These approaches differ from each other by the fundamental postulates on which the theory is based. All of them are characterized by the same fundamental requirement that the results should be obtained without having recourse to statistical or kinetic theories. None of these approaches is concerned with the atomic structure of the material. Therefore, they represent a pure phenomenological approach. The principal postulates of the first approach, usually called the classical thermodynamics of irreversible processes, are documented. The principle of local state is assumed to be valid. The equation of entropy balance is assumed to involve a term expressing the entropy production which can be represented as a sum of products of fluxes and forces. This term is zero for a state of equilibrium and positive for an irreversible process. The fluxes are function of forces, not necessarily linear. However, the reciprocity relations concern only coefficients of the linear terms of the series expansions. Using methods of this approach, a thermodynamic description of elastic, rheologic and plastic materials was obtained. 

MSN. 102. I. Prigogine, Entropy, time and kinetic description, in Order and Fluctuations in Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics, 17th International Solvay Conference on Physics, G. Nicolis, G. Dewel, and J. W. Turner, eds., Wiley, 1980, pp. 35-75. 

Cantor and SchimmeP provide a lucid description of the thermodynamics of the hydrophobic effect, and they stress the importance of considering both the unitary and cratic contributions to the partial molal entropy of solute-solvent interactions. Briefly, the partial molal entropy (5a) is the sum of the unitary contribution (5a ) which takes into account the characteristics of solute A and its interactions with water) and the cratic term (-R In Ca, where R is the universal gas constant and ( a is the mole fraction of component A) which is a statistical term resulting from the mixing of component A with solvent molecules. The unitary change in entropy 5a ... 

The fundamental question in transport theory is Can one describe processes in nonequilibrium systems with the help of (local) thermodynamic functions of state (thermodynamic variables) This question can only be checked experimentally. On an atomic level, statistical mechanics is the appropriate theory. Since the entropy, 5, is the characteristic function for the formulation of equilibria (in a closed system), the deviation, SS, from the equilibrium value, S0, is the function which we need to use for the description of non-equilibria. Since we are interested in processes (i.e., changes in a system over time), the entropy production rate a = SS is the relevant function in irreversible thermodynamics. Irreversible processes involve linear reactions (rates 55) as well as nonlinear ones. We will be mainly concerned with processes that occur near equilibrium and so we can linearize the kinetic equations. The early development of this theory was mainly due to the Norwegian Lars Onsager. Let us regard the entropy S(a,/3,. ..) as a function of the (extensive) state variables a,/ ,. .. .which are either constant (fi,.. .) or can be controlled and measured (a). In terms of the entropy production rate, we have (9a/0f=a)... 

The connection between the microscopic description of any system in terms of individual states and its macroscopic thermodynamical behavior was provided by Boltzmann through statistical mechanics. The key connection is that the entropy of a system is proportional to the natural logarithm of the number of levels available to the system, thus ... 

The Entropy and Irreversible Processes.—Unlike the internal energy and the first law of thermodynamics, the entropy and the second law are relatively unfamiliar. Like them, however, their best interpretation comes from the atomic point of view, as carried out in statistical mechanics. For this reason, we shall start with a qualitative description of the nature of the entropy, rather than with quantitative definitions and methods of measurement. 

Classical thermodynamics is based on a description of matter through such macroscopic properties as temperature and pressure. However, these properties are manifestations of the behavior of the countless microscopic particles, such as molecules, that make up a finite system. Evidently, one must seek an understanding of the fundamental nature of entropy in a microscopic description of matter. Because of the enormous number of particles contained in any system of interest, such a description must necessarily be statistical in nature. We present here a very brief indication of the statistical interpretation of entropy, t... 

For the quantitative description of the sequence distribution in the multicomponent copolymers the statistical characteristics similar to the ones applied for the description of the binary copolymerization products were used [45, 104-110]. In their well-known paper [45] Alfrey and Goldfinger stated an exponential character of the run distribution f (n) for length n with copolymerization of any number m of monomer types. Besides this distribution and its statistical moments [104-107] other parameters as alternation degree were introduced [108,107], which equals the overall fraction of all heterotriads P(M Mj) (i 4= j), and also the parameter with the similar meaning called alternating order [109]. Tosi [110] suggested to use informational entropy as a quantitative measure of the randomness of the multicomponent copolymers ... 

The topic arises from the following sequence of aspects of entropy when entropy is introduced on a thermodynamic basis the issue is the motion of heat (Jaynes, 1988), and the assessment involves calorimetry an entropy change is evaluated. When entropy is formalized with the classical view of statistical thermodynamics, the entropy is found by evaluating a configurational integral (Bennett, 1976). But a macroscopic physical system at a particular thermodynamic state has a particular entropy, a state function, and the whole description of the physical system shouldn t involve more than a mechanical trajectory for the system in a stationary, equilibrium condition. How are these different concepts compatible ... 

Riccardo and coworkers [50, 51] reported the results of a statistical thermodynamic approach to study linear adsorbates on heterogeneous surfaces based on Eqns (3.33)—(3.35). In the first paper, they dealt with low dimensional systems (e.g., carbon nanotubes, pores of molecular dimensions, comers in steps found on flat surfaces). In the second paper, they presented an improved solution for multilayer adsorption they compared their results with the standard BET formalism and found that monolayer capacities could be up to 1.5 times larger than the one from the BET model. They argued that their model is simple and easy to apply in practice and leads to new values of surface area and adsorption heats. These advantages are a consequence of correctly assessing the configurational entropy of the adsorbed phase. Rzysko et al. [52] presented a theoretical description of adsorption in a templated porous material. Their method of solution uses expansions of size-dependent correlation functions into Fourier series. They tested... 

General Description of the Cluster Variation Method. In the previous paragraphs we have described several approximation schemes for treating the statistical mechanics of lattice-gas Hamiltonians like those introduced in the previous section. These approximations and systematic improvements to them are afforded a unifying description when viewed from the perspective of the cluster variation method. The evaluation of the entropy associated with the alloy can be carried out approximately but systematically by recourse to this method. The idea of the cluster variation method is to introduce an increasingly refined description of the correlations that are present in the system, and with it, to produce a series of increasingly improved estimates for the entropy. 

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