Thermodynamic limit for isokinetic thermostats

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.Comment: 5 pages v.2: referee's comments taken into accoun

Geometry of contours and Peierls estimates in d=1 Ising models

Following Fr\"ohlich and Spencer, we study one dimensional Ising spin systems with ferromagnetic, long range interactions which decay as $|x-y|^{-2+\alpha}$, $0\leq \alpha\leq 1/2$. We introduce a geometric description of the spin configurations in terms of triangles which play the role of contours and for which we establish Peierls bounds. This in particular yields a direct proof of the well known result by Dyson about phase transitions at low temperatures.Comment: 28 pages, 3 figure

Stationary States in Infinite Volume with Non-zero Current

We study the Ginzburg\u2013Landau stochastic models in infinite domains with some special geometry and prove that without the help of external forces there are stationary measures with non-zero current in three or more dimensions

Tunnelling in nonlocal evolution equations

We study "tunnelling" in a one-dimensional, nonlocal evolution equation by assigning a penalty functional to orbits which deviate from solutions of the evolution equation. We discuss the variational problem of computing the minimal penalty for orbits which connect two stable, stationary solutions

Nonequilibrium, thermostats and thermodynamic limit

The relation between thermostats of "isoenergetic" and "frictionless" kind is studied and their equivalence in the thermodynamic limit is proved in space dimension $d=1,2$ and, for special geometries, $d=3$.Comment: 22 pages PRA 2-columns format v3: Typos corrected as acknowledge

Thermodynamics for spatially inhomogeneous magnetization and Young-Gibbs measures

We derive thermodynamic functionals for spatially inhomogeneous magnetization on a torus in the context of an Ising spin lattice model. We calculate the corresponding free energy and pressure (by applying an appropriate external field using a quadratic Kac potential) and show that they are related via a modified Legendre transform. The local properties of the infinite volume Gibbs measure, related to whether a macroscopic configuration is realized as a homogeneous state or as a mixture of pure states, are also studied by constructing the corresponding Young-Gibbs measures

Current reservoirs in the simple exclusion process

We consider the symmetric simple exclusion process in the interval $[-N,N]$ with additional birth and death processes respectively on $(N-K,N]$, $K>0$, and $[-N,-N+K)$. The exclusion is speeded up by a factor $N^2$, births and deaths by a factor $N$. Assuming propagation of chaos (a property proved in a companion paper "Truncated correlations in the stirring process with births and deaths") we prove convergence in the limit $N\to \infty$ to the linear heat equation with Dirichlet condition on the boundaries; the boundary conditions however are not known a priori, they are obtained by solving a non linear equation. The model simulates mass transport with current reservoirs at the boundaries and the Fourier law is proved to hold