A No-Go Theorem of Analytical Mechanics for the Second Law Violation

Abstract

We follow the Boltzmann-Clausius-Maxwell (BCM) proposal to solve a long-standing problem of identifying the underlying cause of the second law (SL) of spontaneous irreversibility, a stochastic universal principle, as the mechanical equilibrium (stable or unstable) principle (Mec-EQ-P) of analytical mechanics of an isolated nonequilibrium system of any size. The principle leads to nonnegative system intrinsic (SI) microwork and SI-average macrowork dW during any spontaneous process. In conjuction with the first law, Mec-EQ-P leads to a generalized second law (GSL) dQ=dW>0, where dQ=TdS is the purely stochastic SI-macroheat that corresponds to dS>0 for T>0 and dS<0 for T<0, where T is the temperature. The GSL supercedes the conventional SL formulation that is valid only for a macroscopic system for positive temperatures temperatures, but reformulates it to dS<0 for negative temperatures. It is quite surprising that GSL is not only a direct consequence of intertwined mechanical and stochastic macroquantities through the first law but also remains valid for any arbitrary irreversible process in a system of any size as an identity for positive and negative temperatures. It also becomes a no-go theorem for GSL-violation unless we abandon Mec-EQ-P of analytical mechanics used in the BCM proposal, which will be catastrophic for theoretical physics. In addition, Mec-EQ-P also provides new insights into the roles of spontaneity, nonspontaneity, negative temperatures, instability, and the significance of dS<0 due to nonspontaneity and inserting internal constraints.