Abstract
A symmetry breaking (SB) involves an abrupt change in the set of microstates that a system can explore. This change has unavoidable thermodynamic implications. According to Boltzmann’s microscopic interpretation of entropy, a shrinkage of the set of compatible states implies a decrease of entropy, which eventually needs to be compensated by a dissipation of heat and consequently requires work. Examples are the compression of a gas and the erasure of information.
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Notes
- 1.
\(\tilde{p}^i_j\) can be seen as a conditional probability, since it measures the probability to choose the instance \(j\) in the backward process \(\tilde{\lambda }_t^i\) implemented as the time reversal of \(\lambda _t^i\). Therefore it is the probability to choose \(j\) in the backward process conditioned to the fact that the choice in the forward process was \(i\), \(\tilde{p}^i_j = \tilde{p} (j | i)\).
- 2.
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Roldán, É. (2014). Energetics of Symmetry Breaking. In: Irreversibility and Dissipation in Microscopic Systems. Springer Theses. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07079-7_6
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