Statistical Mechanics of Entropy Production: Gibbsian hypothesis and local fluctuations

C. Maes

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arXiv · cond-mat/0106464

Statistical Mechanics of Entropy Production: Gibbsian hypothesis and local fluctuations

C. Maes

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Abstract

It is argued that a Gibbsian formula for the space-time distribution of microscopic trajectories of a nonequilibrium system provides a unifying framework for recent results on the fluctuations of the entropy production. The variable entropy production is naturally expressed as the time-reversal symmetry breaking part of the space-time action functional. Its mean is always positive. This is both supported by a Boltzmann type analysis by counting the change in phase space extension corresponding to the macrostate as by various examples of nonequilibrium models. As the Gibbsian set-up allows for non-Markovian dynamics, we also get a local fluctuation theorem for the entropy production in globally Markovian models. In order to study the response of the system to perturbations, we can apply the standard Gibbs formalism.

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C. Maes. 2001-07-09. Statistical Mechanics of Entropy Production: Gibbsian hypothesis and local fluctuations. https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0106464

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