On the Second Law of thermodynamics and the piston problem

Abstract

The piston problem is investigated in the case where the length of the cylinder is infinite (on both sides) and the ratio $m/M$ is a very small parameter, where $m$ is the mass of one particle of the gaz and $M$ is the mass of the piston. Introducing initial conditions such that the stochastic motion of the piston remains in the average at the origin (no drift), it is shown that the time evolution of the fluids, analytically derived from Liouville equation, agrees with the Second Law of thermodynamics. We thus have a non equilibrium microscopical model whose evolution can be explicitly shown to obey the two laws of thermodynamics.

29 pages, 9 figures submitted to Journal of Statistical Physics (2003)

References in corpus (5)

• Dynamics of a Massive Piston in an Ideal Gas: Oscillatory Motion and Approach to Equilibrium
• Langevin Equation for the Rayleigh model with finite-ranged interactions
• Diffusive Lorentz gases and multibaker maps are compatible with irreversible thermodynamics
• On a slow drift of a massive piston in an ideal gas that remains at mechanical equilibrium
• Nonequilibrium thermodynamics ?

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