Microscopic approach to entropy production

TL;DR

This paper develops a microscopic framework combining projection operator techniques with thermodynamics to derive entropy production and transport equations, advancing the understanding of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel microscopic derivation of entropy production and dissipation functionals within linear irreversible thermodynamics.

Findings

Derived microscopic expressions for entropy production.

Formulated transport equations for entropy density.

Presented a dissipation functional for extended density functional theory.

Abstract

It is a great challenge of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics to calculate entropy production within a microscopic theory. In the framework of linear irreversible thermodynamics, we combine the Mori-Zwanzig-Forster projection operator technique with the first and second law of thermodynamics to obtain microscopic expressions for the entropy production as well as for the transport equations of the entropy density and its time correlation function. We further present a microscopic derivation of a dissipation functional from which the dissipative dynamics of an extended dynamical density functional theory can be obtained in a formally elegant way.