Informational Statistical Thermodynamics

Abstract

The term ist is applied to the theory that provides a statistical-mechanical-founded irreversible thermodynamics on the basis of Jaynes’ Predictive Statistical Mechanics with the accompanying maximum entropy formalism (MaxEnt). The use of the underlying ideas of MaxEnt to derive macroscopic properties for systems in nonequilibrium were pursued by several authors. After Jaynes’ original papers were published [106] there followed applications in which the general features of irreversibility were discussed [30, 139]. Kinetic and transport equations using MaxEnt were obtained for very specific cases [140, 141], afterwards brought together into a unifying scheme by Lewis [142] (See also references [143, 144]). Connections with cit are due to several authors, in particular to Zubarev [145]. Finally, we should mention Nettleton’s use of Maxent to obtain a description of conduction of heat in dense fluids [146, 147], and a generalized Grad-type foundation for eit with altered thermodynamic forces [40, 4 l].Nettleton pursued this line in further papers [42, 148, 149]. A version of ist founded on MaxEnt-Nesom, that is, a microscopic approach to phenomenological irreversible thermodynamics based on such particular nonequilibrium ensemble formalism is described in references [133, 134]. It provides, as a particular case, the connection of eit of the first chapter and the nesom of chapter 2 [14].