Towards a nonequilibrium thermodynamics: A Self-contained macroscopic description of driven diffusive systems (Q833354)

The paper presents a ``physical theory'' for a certain class of thermodynamic systems that are out of equilibrium. In this state it's difficult to define a general class (or classes), for which an unified study is possible and the details of macroscopic dynamics play a far greater role than in equilibrium. One of the possible attempts is to construct a non-equilibrium thermodynamics with local equilibrium states (i.e., locally there is a possibility to define the variables like density, temperature, etc. which vary smoothly in the time scale). This means that macroscopically such a system reaches local equilibrium in time, which is shorter to the times of typical macroscopic evolutions. However, there are also cases where this approach fails but in this paper they aren't considered. In nonequilibrium systems the free energy is (in general) a non local function and we have the existence of correlations at the macroscopic level. The presented in paper theory seems to be (in authors opinion) a substantial improvement but with respect to the Onsanger approach. The suggested by the authors approach can be applicable to the real systems with nonlinear evolution equations and arbitrary boundary conditions. However, the authors assume a linear response with respect to the external applied field (the Onsanger theory is recovered as a first order approximation). The paper consists of four sections and one appendix where the ABC Model is presented both from microscopic and macroscopic point of view. In section 2 the readers can find the thermodynamic description for out of equilibrium diffusive systems. Te description is based on local thermodynamic variables which evolve according to (nonlinear) diffusion equations with boundary conditions and/or external fields which force the system out of equilibrium. The authors remark that the optimal trajectory provides a dynamical alternative to the usual prescription of equilibrium thermodynamics to calculate the free energy variation via a quasi static transformation. In Section 3 the discussion about the notion of equilibrium is given. The notion of macroscopic reversibility and its relationship to thermodynamic equilibrium is also presented. As an outcome of given analysis is that the correct definition of equilibrium, for the driven diffusive systems, is the vanishing of the currents. In last section the authors derive from the Hamilton-Jacobi equation the generic existence of long range correlations in nonequilibrium states. They also discuss the conditions on the transport coefficients for their appearance in the two point correlation function. A simple criterion to determine whether density fluctuations are positively or negatively correlated is also established. The paper is mostly based on previous papers of the authors (9 papers, ref. [1-7], [15] and [17]) where the approach was used in the case analysis of fluctuations in stochastic lattice gasses.