Statistical mechanics far from equilibrium: prediction and test for a sheared system

Abstract

We report the complete statistical treatment of a system of particles interacting via Newtonian forces in continuous boundary-driven flow, far from equilibrium. By numerically time-stepping the force-balance equations of a model fluid we measure occupancies and transition rates in simulation. The high-shear-rate simulation data verify the invariant quantities predicted by our statistical theory, thus demonstrating that a class of non-equilibrium steady states of matter, namely sheared complex fluids, is amenable to statistical treatment from first principles.

4 pages plus a 3-page pdf supplement

References in corpus (3)

• Invariant quantities in shear flow
• Properties of a non-equilibrium heat bath
• Steady shear flow thermodynamics based on a canonical distribution approach

Cited by in corpus (5)

• A General Algorithm for Sampling Rare Events in Non-Equilibrium and Non-Stationary Systems
• Non-equilibrium steady states : maximization of the Shannon entropy associated to the distribution of dynamical trajectories in the presence of constraints
• Absence of dissipation in trajectory ensembles biased by currents
• Numerical comparison of a constrained path ensemble and a driven quasisteady state
• Large deviation statistics of non-equilibrium fluctuations in a sheared model-fluid