Entropy is in flux V3.4 (Q2403249): Difference between revisions

The text has not received its final authorization by the author (deceased) and has been published with original referee comments appended. It is in part an essay, in part a regular theoretical physics endeavour (no rigorous mathematics being involved) summarizing the author's personal search for a conceptual unity of grand thermodynamic notions, including entropy, and attempts to give them a meaning for non-equilibrium systems, classical and quantum. By turning back to the original Boltzmann H-theorem, and the kinetic theory of rarified gases, with its local conservation laws (transport equations), the author has isolated the condition of local equilibrium as the necessary one for the existence of a locally defined kinetic entropy and entropy density rate of change (e.g., the flux). This conceptual background is carefully tested in the context of the Landau theory of the Fermi liquid and is related to a number of condensed matter systems like, e.g., superfluids or ordinary metals. In the Landau theory, the kinetic entropy can be calculated and agrees with the thermodynamic entropy in appropriate limits. In contrast to the Boltzmann theory of a dilute gas (composed of particles), Landau's approach refers to a quasiparticle dynamics for some low-temperature fermion systems, that enable the definition of entropy, and the notions of local equilibrium and kinetic entropy. On the other hand it was and still is basically unknown whether the notion of local equilibrium and hence that of the kinetic entropy can be introduced in the fully fledged quantum many-body system. The present paper, in large part, is devoted to the re-analysis of the Martin-Schwinger-Green function method of the year 1959 in the description of non-equilibrium quantum degenerate systems [\textit{P. C. Martin} and \textit{J. Schwinger}, Phys. Rev., II. Ser. 115, 1342--1373 (1959; Zbl 0091.22906)]. The paper describes how quantum kinetic equations for involved generalized Wigner functions give rise to locally defined conservation laws. Under the assumption of the local equilibrium, this kinetic theory enables a reasonable definition of the density of kinetic entropy. It has been verified that this definition fails if the local equilibrium assumption is invalid. In fact no physically acceptable argument has been found that would minimize deviations from local equilibrium in the kinetic equation. The author's conclusion is that in the theory operating with the one-particle Green functions, one cannot construct a useful analogue of the kinetic entropy for a general non-equilibrium quantum system. A hint is left that perhaps accounting for two-particle Green functions (hence quantum correlations) may cure this disease. That points towards modern studies of correlations in quantum systems, as summarized in the general topic of quantum entanglement in condensed matter systems, cf. [\textit{N. Laflorencie}, ``Quantum entanglement in condensed matter systems'', Physics Reports 646, 1--59 (2016; \url{doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2016.06.008})].