5,323 research outputs found
Entropy and Nonlinear Nonequilibrium Thermodynamic Relation for Heat Conducting Steady States
Among various possible routes to extend entropy and thermodynamics to
nonequilibrium steady states (NESS), we take the one which is guided by
operational thermodynamics and the Clausius relation. In our previous study, we
derived the extended Clausius relation for NESS, where the heat in the original
relation is replaced by its "renormalized" counterpart called the excess heat,
and the Gibbs-Shannon expression for the entropy by a new symmetrized
Gibbs-Shannon-like expression. Here we concentrate on Markov processes
describing heat conducting systems, and develop a new method for deriving
thermodynamic relations. We first present a new simpler derivation of the
extended Clausius relation, and clarify its close relation with the linear
response theory. We then derive a new improved extended Clausius relation with
a "nonlinear nonequilibrium" contribution which is written as a correlation
between work and heat. We argue that the "nonlinear nonequilibrium"
contribution is unavoidable, and is determined uniquely once we accept the
(very natural) definition of the excess heat. Moreover it turns out that to
operationally determine the difference in the nonequilibrium entropy to the
second order in the temperature difference, one may only use the previous
Clausius relation without a nonlinear term or must use the new relation,
depending on the operation (i.e., the path in the parameter space). This
peculiar "twist" may be a clue to a better understanding of thermodynamics and
statistical mechanics of NESS.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figure
Multi-Dimensional Astrophysical Structural and Dynamical Analysis I. Development of a Nonlinear Finite Element Approach
A new field of numerical astrophysics is introduced which addresses the
solution of large, multidimensional structural or slowly-evolving problems
(rotating stars, interacting binaries, thick advective accretion disks, four
dimensional spacetimes, etc.). The technique employed is the Finite Element
Method (FEM), commonly used to solve engineering structural problems. The
approach developed herein has the following key features:
1. The computational mesh can extend into the time dimension, as well as
space, perhaps only a few cells, or throughout spacetime.
2. Virtually all equations describing the astrophysics of continuous media,
including the field equations, can be written in a compact form similar to that
routinely solved by most engineering finite element codes.
3. The transformations that occur naturally in the four-dimensional FEM
possess both coordinate and boost features, such that
(a) although the computational mesh may have a complex, non-analytic,
curvilinear structure, the physical equations still can be written in a simple
coordinate system independent of the mesh geometry.
(b) if the mesh has a complex flow velocity with respect to coordinate space,
the transformations will form the proper arbitrary Lagrangian- Eulerian
advective derivatives automatically.
4. The complex difference equations on the arbitrary curvilinear grid are
generated automatically from encoded differential equations.
This first paper concentrates on developing a robust and widely-applicable
set of techniques using the nonlinear FEM and presents some examples.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figures; added integral boundary conditions, allowing
very rapidly-rotating stars; accepted for publication in Ap.
Cosmological Lower Bound on Dark Matter Masses from the Soft Gamma-ray Background
Motivated by a recent detection of 511 keV photons from the center of our
Galaxy, we calculate the spectrum of the soft gamma-ray background of the
redshifted 511 keV photons from cosmological halos. Annihilation of dark matter
particles into electron-positron pairs makes a substantial contribution to the
gamma-ray background. Mass of such dark matter particles must be <~ 100 MeV so
that resulting electron-positron pairs are on-relativistic. On the other hand,
we show that in order for the annihilation not to exceed the observed
background, the dark matter mass needs to be >~ 20 MeV. We include the
contribution from the active galactic nuclei and supernovae. The halo
substructures may increase the lower bound to >~ 60 MeV.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in PRD, Rapid
Communicatio
General Relativistic effects on the conversion of nuclear to two-flavour quark matter in compact stars
We investigate the General Relativistic (GR) effects on the conversion from
nuclear to two-flavour quark matter in compact stars, both static as well as
rotating. We find that GR effects lead to qualitative differences in rotating
stars, indicating the inadequacy of non-relativistic (NR) or even Special
Relativistic (SR) treatments for these cases.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Representation of nonequilibrium steady states in large mechanical systems
Recently a novel concise representation of the probability distribution of
heat conducting nonequilibrium steady states was derived. The representation is
valid to the second order in the ``degree of nonequilibrium'', and has a very
suggestive form where the effective Hamiltonian is determined by the excess
entropy production. Here we extend the representation to a wide class of
nonequilibrium steady states realized in classical mechanical systems where
baths (reservoirs) are also defined in terms of deterministic mechanics. The
present extension covers such nonequilibrium steady states with a heat
conduction, with particle flow (maintained either by external field or by
particle reservoirs), and under an oscillating external field. We also simplify
the derivation and discuss the corresponding representation to the full order.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figure
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