IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v263y1999i1p516-527.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Microscopic origins of irreversible macroscopic behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Lebowitz, Joel L.

Abstract

Time-asymmetric behavior as embodied in the second law of thermodynamics is observed in individual macroscopic systems. It can be understood as arising naturally from time-symmetric microscopic laws in accord with the ideas of Thompson, Maxwell and Boltzmann. Alternative explanations based on equating irreversible macroscopic behavior with the mixing type of behavior already present in the time evolution of ensembles (probability distributions) of certain systems having only a few degrees of freedom are, in my opinion, unnecessary, misguided and misleading.

Suggested Citation

  • Lebowitz, Joel L., 1999. "Microscopic origins of irreversible macroscopic behavior," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 263(1), pages 516-527.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:263:y:1999:i:1:p:516-527
    DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(98)00514-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437198005147
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/S0378-4371(98)00514-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kalogeropoulos, Nikolaos, 2018. "Time irreversibility from symplectic non-squeezing," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 495(C), pages 202-210.
    2. Lebed, Igor V., 2019. "The cause for emergence of irreversibility," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 524(C), pages 325-341.
    3. Creaco, Anthony J. & Kalogeropoulos, Nikolaos, 2019. "Irreversibility from staircases in symplectic embeddings," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 513(C), pages 497-509.
    4. Pérez-Cárdenas, Fernando C. & Resca, Lorenzo & Pegg, Ian L., 2016. "Microscopic reversibility and macroscopic irreversibility: A lattice gas model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 457(C), pages 82-92.
    5. Gorban, Alexander, 2007. "Order–disorder separation: Geometric revision," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 374(1), pages 85-102.
    6. Waldner, Franz & Hoover, William G. & Hoover, Carol G., 2014. "The brief time-reversibility of the local Lyapunov exponents for a small chaotic Hamiltonian system," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 68-76.
    7. Ali, S.A. & Cafaro, C. & Kim, D.-H. & Mancini, S., 2010. "The effect of microscopic correlations on the information geometric complexity of Gaussian statistical models," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(16), pages 3117-3127.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:263:y:1999:i:1:p:516-527. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.