arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to G. Gallavotti.
Thermostats models in space dimension d=1,2,3 for nonequilibrium statistical mechanics are considered and it is shown that, in the thermodynamic limit, the evolutions admit infinitely many constants of motion: namely the intensive observables.
Thermostats models in space dimension $d=1,2,3$ for nonequilibrium statistical mechanics are considered and it is shown that, in the thermodynamic limit, the motions of frictionless thermostats and isokinetic thermostats coincide.
The relation between isoenergetic and Hamiltonian thermostats is studied and their equivalence in the thermodynamic limit is proved in space dimension $d=1,2$. v.2: W_n and x_n replace W and x where needed
Revisiting canonical integration of the classical pendulum around its unstable equilibrium, normal hyperbolic canonical coordinates are constructed
A simulation is performed aiming at checking the existence of a well defined stationary state for a two dimensional system of driven hard disks when energy dissipation takes place at the system boundaries and no bulk impurities are present
In this note we discuss a paradigmatic example of interacting particles subject to non conservative external forces and to the action of thermostats consisting of external (finite) reservoirs of particles. We then consider a model of granular materials of interest for experimental tests that had recently attracted lot of attentions. This model can be reduced to the previously discussed example under a number of assumptions, in particular that inelasticity due to internal collisions can be neglected for the purpose of measuring the large deviation functional for entropy production rate. We show that if the restitution coefficient in the granular material model is close to one, then the required assuptions are verified on a specific time scale and we predict a fluctuation relation for the entropy production rate measured on the same time scale.
A simple class of chaotic systems in a random environment is considered and the fluctuation theorem is extended under the assumption of reversibility.
Entropy creation rate is introduced for a system interacting with thermostats ({\it i.e.}, in the usual language, for a system subject to internal conservative forces interacting with ``external'' thermostats via conservative forces) and a fluctuation theorem for it is proved. As an application a time scale is introduced, to be interpreted as the time over which irreversibility becomes manifest in a process leading from an initial to a final stationary state of a mechanical system in a general nonequilibrium context. The time scale is evaluated in a few examples, including the classical Joule-Thompson process (gas expansion in a vacuum). The new version (n.2) contains several comments on references pointed out to me after posting the version n.1.
The chaotic hypothesis has several implications which have generated interest in the literature because of their generality and because a few exact predictions are among them. However its application to Physics problems requires attention and can lead to apparent inconsistencies. In particular there are several cases that have been considered in the literature in which singularities are built in the models: for instance when among the forces there are Lennard-Jones potentials (which are infinite in the origin) and the constraints imposed on the system do not forbid arbitrarily close approach to the singularity even though the average kinetic energy is bounded. The situation is well understood in certain special cases in which the system is subject to Gaussian noise; here the treatment of rather general singular systems is considered and the predictions of the chaotic hypothesis for such situations are derived. The main conclusion is that the chaotic hypothesis is perfectly adequate to describe the singular physical systems we consider, i.e. deterministic systems with thermostat forces acting according to Gauss' principle for the constraint of constant total kinetic energy (``isokinetic Gaussian thermostats''), close and far from equilibrium. Near equilibrium it even predicts a fluctuation relation which, in deterministic cases with more general thermostat forces (i.e. not necessarily of Gaussian isokinetic nature), extends recent relations obtained in situations in which the thermostatting forces satisfy Gauss' principle. This relation agrees, where expected, with the fluctuation theorem for perfectly chaotic systems. The results are compared with some recent works in the literature.
Resonant motions of integrable systems subject to perturbations may continue to exist and to cover surfaces with parametric equations admitting a formal power expansion in the strength of the perturbation. Such series may be, sometimes, summed via suitable sum rules defining $C^\infty$ functions of the perturbation strength: here we find sufficient conditions for the Borel summability of their sums in the case of two-dimensional rotation vectors with Diophantine exponent $τ=1$ (e. g. with ratio of the two independent frequencies equal to the golden mean).
The Fluctuation Relation (FR) is an asymptotic result on the distribution of certain observables averaged over time intervals T as T goes to infinity and it is a generalization of the fluctuation--dissipation theorem to far from equilibrium systems in a steady state which reduces to the usual Green-Kubo (GK) relation in the limit of small external non conservative forces. FR is a theorem for smooth uniformly hyperbolic systems, and it is assumed to be true in all dissipative ``chaotic enough'' systems in a steady state. In this paper we develop a theory of finite time corrections to FR, needed to compare the asymptotic prediction of FR with numerical observations, which necessarily involve fluctuations of observables averaged over finite time intervals T. We perform a numerical test of FR in two cases in which non Gaussian fluctuations are observable while GK does not apply and we get a non trivial verification of FR that is independent of and different from linear response theory. Our results are compatible with the theory of finite time corrections to FR, while FR would be observably violated, well within the precision of our experiments, if such corrections were neglected.
In transformations between nonequilibrium stationary states, entropy might be a not well defined concept. It might be analogous to the ``heat content'' in transformations in equilibrium which is not well defined either, if they are not isochoric ({\it i.e.} do involve mechanical work). Hence we conjecture that un a nonequilbrium stationary state the entropy is just a quantity that can be transferred or created, like heat in equilibrium, but has no physical meaning as ``entropy content'' as a property of the system.
Twentyseven comments (.) on the Second Law and nonequilibrium systems
The probability of observing a large deviation (LD) in the number of particles in a region $Λ$ in a dilute quantum gas contained in a much larger region $V$ is shown to decay as $\exp[-|Λ|ΔF]$, where $|Ł|$ is the volume of $Λ$ and $ΔF$ is the change in the appropriate free energy density, the same as in classical systems. However, in contrast with the classical case, where this formula holds at all temperatures and chemical potentials our proof is restricted to rarefied gases, both for the typical and observed density, at least for Bose or Fermi systems. The case of Boltzmann statistics with a bounded repulsive potential can be treated at all temperatures and densities. Fermions on a lattice in any dimension, or in the continuum in one dimension, can be treated at all densities and temperatures if the interaction is small enough (depending on density and temperature), provided one assumes periodic boundary conditions.
We consider a class of a priori stable quasi-integrable analytic Hamiltonian systems and study the regularity of low-dimensional hyperbolic invariant tori as functions of the perturbation parameter. We show that, under natural nonresonance conditions, such tori exist and can be identified through the maxima or minima of a suitable potential. They are analytic inside a disc centered at the origin and deprived of a region around the positive or negative real axis with a quadratic cusp at the origin. The invariant tori admit an asymptotic series at the origin with Taylor coefficients that grow at most as a power of a factorial and a remainder that to any order N is bounded by the (N+1)-st power of the argument times a power of $N!$. We show the existence of a summation criterion of the (generically divergent) series, in powers of the perturbation size, that represent the parametric equations of the tori by following the renormalization group methods for the resummations of perturbative series in quantum field theory
An attempt is made to clarify the difference between a theorem derived by Evans and Searles in 1994 on the statistics of trajectories in phase space and a theorem proved by the authors in 1995 on the statistics of fluctuations on phase space trajectory segments in a nonequilibrium stationary state.
We continue a previous paper to show that Mel'nikov's first order formula for part of the separatrix splitting of a pendulum under fast quasi periodic forcing holds, in special examples, as an asymptotic formula in the forcing rapidity.
Results in the mentioned paper do not seem valid.