Dynamical mechanisms leading to equilibration in two-component gases

Abstract

Demonstrating how microscopic dynamics cause large systems to approach thermal equilibrium remains an elusive, longstanding, and actively-pursued goal of statistical mechanics. We identify here a dynamical mechanism for thermalization in a general class of two-component dynamical Lorentz gases, and prove that each component, even when maintained in a non-equilibrium state itself, can drive the other to a thermal state with a well-defined effective temperature.

5 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (4)

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• Thermal Rectification in Billiard-like Systems
• Normal transport properties for a classical particle coupled to a non-Ohmic bath
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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Micro-reversibility and thermalization with collisional baths
• Rigorous results on approach to thermal equilibrium, entanglement, and nonclassicality of an optical quantum field mode scattering from the elements of a non-equilibrium quantum reservoir