Stationary states for a mechanical system with stochastic boundary conditions (Q1101797)

An outstanding problem in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics is that of finding a canonical description, analogous to that provided by the Gibbs state for equilibrium, for steady state nonequilibrium phenomena, such as the steady state heat flow produced when the walls confining a gas are maintained at different temperatures. The simplest way to classically model such a gas is by requiring that whenever a particle hits a wall its velocity is ``thermalized'' according to the temperature of the wall at the point of collision. In this paper we establish the existence and uniqueness of a stationary microscopic state for such a system. We are, however, very far from a sort of understanding of this state which would be required to attain a canonical description of the steady state.