Continuous non-equilibrium transition driven by the heat flow

Abstract

We discovered an out-of-equilibrium transition in the ideal gas between two walls, divided by an inner, adiabatic, movable wall. The system is driven out-of-equilibrium by supplying energy directly into the volume of the gas. At critical heat flux, we have found a continuous transition to the state with a low-density, hot gas on one side of the movable wall and a dense, cold gas on the other side. Molecular dynamic simulations of the soft-sphere fluid confirm the existence of the transition in the interacting system. We introduce a stationary state Helmholtz-like function whose minimum determines the stable positions of the internal wall. This transition can be used as a paradigm of transitions in stationary states and the Helmholtz-like function as a paradigm of the thermodynamic description of these states.

8 pages, 6 figures; paragraph one rewritten; comments added regarding maxEP, and figures 4, 5 and 6 are added; references added and typos corrected

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Unique extension of the maximum entropy principle to phase coexistence in heat conduction
• Thermodynamics of stationary states of the ideal gas in a heat flow