No label defined (Q4375377)

The interest in chaotic systems has interesting repercussions on the studies on the foundations of thermodynamics. On the one side, informational entropy (as well as topology) has been used in the characterization of strange attractors. On the other side, the chaotic behaviour of the microscopic solutions describing the system at molecular scale plays an important role in the derivation of the thermodynamic behaviour from a microscopic basis. The aim of the present book is to explore which property of the physical systems -- the many degrees of freedom or the chaotic character of motion -- is essential for the validity of the laws of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. It is seen that a large number of degrees of freedom is not required (at least for the validity of equilibrium thermodynamics), and a formulation of thermodynamics for systems with few degrees of freedom is proposed. The book discusses in detail ergodic Hamiltonian systems and gives fragmentary but interesting views on nonergodic and dissipative systems. An especially interesting topic is the statistical mechanics of turbulent ideal fluid flows, which is considered in this book from the perspective of ergodic Hamiltonian systems. After a short review of the essentials of Hamiltonian mechanics, the first two chapters are devoted to an analysis of the entropy and its relation to probability. The Einstein formula relating both concepts is generalized in chapter 2 to systems with a low number of degrees of freedom, and two definitions of entropy (canonical and thermodynamic) are compared and shown to be different for the low-dimensional systems, in spite that for most models of statistical mechanics they coincide in the limit of an infinite number of degrees of freedom, except in a few situations. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with specific systems: in chapter 3, nonlinear oscillators are considered, which demonstrate ergodic properties if the energy exceeds some threshold value: Hénon-Heiles oscillators, and the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam problem are considered. Chapter 4 deals with slightly dissipative systems, with special attention to the thermodynamics of limit cycles and of strange attractors, and of flows of fluid systems. It is shown that slightly dissipative systems possess the main feature of equilibrium thermodynamics, namely, the potentiality of constitutive equations, the corresponding ``thermodynamic'' potential having the meaning of a Lagrange function averaged over the attractor. The two last chapters, 5 and 6, deal with some aspects of statistical mechanics of two- and three-dimensional turbulent fluid flows, from the perspective of ergodic Hamiltonian systems. In this context, the analysis of the thermodynamics of the vortex gas in chapter 5 is especially interesting, with the explicit comparison of canonical and thermodynamic entropies, which do not coincide in spite that the system has an infinite number of degrees of freedom. The book will be appealing and valuable for researchers interested in the foundations of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, or in the limits of usual thermodynamics when going to mesoscopic systems characterized by a reduced number of degrees of freedom.