Description of Research Area

A01-001  Thermodynamic Framework of Nonequilibrium Fluctuations

Research Subject

Typical non-equilibrium phenomena of water and air are described as flow of locally equilibrium quantities. Putting such standard non-equilibrium phenomena aside, we attempt to seek for macroscopic phenomena which "locally non-equilibrium fluctuation" dominates,　and aim at understanding the phenomena on the basis of microscopic physical laws. We expect that the phenomena form a universality class which is different from those extensively studied as simple "transportation phenomena" and "dissipative structure." In order to elucidate the nature of this class, we first apply the novel ideas discovered in recent development of fluctuation theory to spatially extended systems, and then we analyze the phenomena associated with non-equilibrium fluctuations and combine the fundamental problems in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. We consider the applicability of extended thermodynamic functions we proposed in the last decade.

Co-Investigator

NAKAGAWA, Naoko

College of Science, Ibaraki University