Quantum local-equilibrium approach to dissipative hydrodynamics

TL;DR

This paper develops a quantum local-equilibrium framework for deriving dissipative hydrodynamic equations, connecting microscopic quantum mechanics with macroscopic fluid behavior, and ensuring thermodynamic consistency.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum local-equilibrium approach that derives hydrodynamic equations, identifies reversible and dissipative currents, and relates transport coefficients to quantum Green-Kubo formulas.

Findings

Entropy production is nonnegative, consistent with the second law.

Transport coefficients are given by quantum Green-Kubo formulas.

The framework applies to multicomponent fluids and broken symmetry phases.

Abstract

The macroscopic hydrodynamic equations are derived for many-body systems in the local-equilibrium approach, using the Schr\"odinger picture of quantum mechanics. In this approach, statistical operators are defined in terms of microscopic densities associated with the fundamentally conserved quantities and other slow modes possibly emerging from continuous symmetry breaking, as well as macrofields conjugated to these densities. Functional identities can be deduced, allowing us to identify the reversible and dissipative parts of the mean current densities, to obtain general equations for the time evolution of the conjugate macrofields, and to establish the relationship to projection-operator methods. The entropy production is shown to be nonnegative by applying the Peierls-Bogoliubov inequality to a quantum integral fluctuation theorem. Using the expansion in the gradients of the conjugate macrofields, the transport coefficients are given by Green-Kubo formulas and the entropy production rate can be expressed in terms of quantum Einstein-Helfand formulas, implying its nonnegativity in agreement with the second law of thermodynamics. The results apply to multicomponent fluids and can be extended to condensed matter phases with broken continuous symmetries.