Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 7: Statistical Physics (General) I

DY 7.2: Talk

Monday, March 16, 2020, 10:15–10:30, ZEU 160

The Five Problems of Irreversibility — •Michael te Vrugt — Institut für Theoretische Physik, Center for Soft Nanoscience, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, D-48149 Münster, Germany

Macroscopic thermodynamics has a clear arrow of time: Systems irreversibly approach equilibrium accompanied by a monotonous increase of entropy. This stands in contrast to the laws of microscopic theories, which are invariant under time-reversal. The question how this difference can be explained has created a long debate, with suggestions involving coarse-graining methods as well as cosmological considerations about the entropy of the early universe. In this talk, I will show that a part of the difficulty in solving the problem of irreversibility arises from the fact that it actually consists of five different sub-problems, which are mixed in most discussions. Understanding why these problems have to be distinguished and how they are related to each other then allows to solve them on the basis of modern nonequilibrium statistical mechanics.