In the scientific and engineering literature, entropy—the distinguishing feature of thermodynamics from other branches of physics—is viewed with skepticism, and thought to be not a physical property of matter—like mass or energy—but a measure either of disorder in a system, or of lack of information about the physics of a system in a thermodynamic equilibrium state, and a plethora of expressions are proposed for its analytical representation. In this article, I present briefly two revolutionary nonstatistical expositions of thermodynamics (revolutionary in the sense of Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, U. Chicago Press, 1970) that apply to all systems (both macroscopic and microscopic, including one spin or a single particle), to all states (thermodynamic equilibrium, and not thermodynamic equilibrium), and that disclose entropy as an intrinsic property of matter.The first theory is presented without reference to quantum mechanics even though quantum theoretic ideas are lurking behind the exposition. The second theory is a unified quantum theory of mechanics and thermodynamics without statistical probabilities, that is, I am not presenting another version of statistical quantum mechanics.
In the scientific and engineering literature, entropy—the distinguishing feature of thermodynamics from other branches of physics—is viewed with skepticism, and thought to be not a physical property of matter—like mass or energy—but a measure either of disorder in a system, or of lack of information about the physics of a system in a thermodynamic equilibrium state, and a plethora of expressions are proposed for its analytical representation. In this article, I present briefly two revolutionary nonstatistical expositions of thermodynamics (revolutionary in the sense of Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, U. Chicago Press, 1970) that apply to all systems (both macroscopic and microscopic, including one spin or a single particle), to all states (thermodynamic equilibrium, and not thermodynamic equilibrium), and that disclose entropy as an intrinsic property of matter.The first theory is presented without reference to quantum mechanics even though quantum theoretic ideas are lurking behind the exposition. The second theory is a unified quantum theory of mechanics and thermodynamics without statistical probabilities, that is, I am not presenting another version of statistical quantum mechanics.
The prevailing beliefs in the scientific and engineering literature are that: (i) thermodynamics is explained and justified by statistical mechanics; (ii) entropy is a statistical measure of disorder; and (iii) for given values of energy, volume, and amounts of constituents, the largest value of entropy corresponds to both a thermodynamic equilibrium state and the ultimate disorder. In this paper, we provide: (i) a summary of the beliefs as stated by some eminent scientists; (ii) experimental evidence that casts serious doubt about the validity of the beliefs; (iii) an outline of a nonstatistical unified quantum theory of mechanics and thermodynamics; (iv) an outline of a nonquantal, nonstatistical exposition of thermodynamics, valid for all systems (both macroscopic and microscopic), and for all states (both thermodynamic equilibrium and not thermodynamic equilibrium); (v) the definition and analytical expression of the entropy of thermodynamics; (vi) the interpretation of entropy as both a measure of the quantum-theoretic spatial shape of a molecule, and an indicator of order; and (vii) nonstatistical answers to the questions that motivated the introduction of statistical mechanics.
Entropy is the distinguishing and most important concept of our efforts to understand and regularize our observations of a very large class of natural phenomena, and yet, it is one of the most contentious concepts of physics. In this article, we review two expositions of thermodynamics, one without reference to quantum theory, and the other quantum mechanical without probabilities of statistical mechanics. In the first, we show that entropy is an inherent property of any system in any state, and that its analytical expression must conform to eight criteria. In the second, we recognize that quantum thermodynamics: (i) admits quantum probabilities described either by wave functions or by nonstatistical density operators; and (ii) requires a nonlinear equation of motion that is delimited by but more general than the Schroedinger equation, and that accounts for both reversible and irreversible evolutions of the state of the system in time. Both the more general quantum probabilities, and the equation of motion have been defined, and the three laws of thermodynamics are shown to be theorems of this equation.
Abstract Part II of this two-part paper refutes the beliefs about the statistical interpretation of thermodynamics, and the association of entropy with disorder that are summarized in Part I. The refutation of the statistical approach is based on either a nonstatistical unified quantum theory of mechanics and thermodynamics, or an almost equivalent, novel, nonquantal exposition of thermodynamics. Entropy is shown to be: (i) valid for any system (both macroscopic and microscopic, including one-particle systems), and any state (both thermodynamic or stable equilibrium, and not stable equilibrium); (ii) a measure of the quantum-theoretic pliable shape of the molecules of a system; and (iii) a monotonic indicator of order. In contrast to statistics which associates a thermodynamic equilibrium macrostate with the largest number of compatible microstates, the second law avers that, for each set of values of energy, volume, and amounts of constituents of either a macroscopic or a microscopic system, there exists one and only one thermodynamic or stable equilibrium state. So, even if Boltzmann’s definition were used, a thermodynamic equilibrium state is one of perfect order.
What is the physical significance of entropy? What is the physical origin of irreversibility? Do entropy and irreversibility exist only for complex and macroscopic systems? The bulk of the physics community accepts and teaches that all these fundamental questions are rationalized within statistical mechanics. Indeed, for everyday laboratory physics, the mathematical formalism of statistical mechanics (canonical and grandcanonica1, Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac distributions) allows a successful description of the thermodynamic equilibrium properties of matter, including entropy values. But an ever growing handful of physicists (Schrodinger among the first) have realized that, even in its explanation of the meaning of entropy, statistical mechanics is impaired by ambiguities and logical inconsistencies. They have started to search for a better theory to eliminate these stumbling blocks while maintaining the mathematical formalism that has been so successful in so many applications. This handful of upstreamers must not be confused with the many schools of physicists that have thrived on the more renowned incompleteness of statistical mechanics, namely, the lack of a quantitative (and the weakness of the qualitative) explanation of the origin of irreversibility. In these studies the thrust is provided by the discovery that the macroscopic dynamics of certain complex systems may be modeled using a few-degrees-of-freedom nonlinear Hamiltonian with singularities that give rise to bifurcations and chaotic behavior. These results have generated successful ways to describe irreversible behavior, but their link to the origin of irreversibility is still only heuristic (what is the connection between the nonlinear model Hamiltonian and the true full Hamiitonian?) and does not provide yet a rigorous resolution of the century-old paradox of the conflict between the irreversibiiity of macroscopic behavior, and the reversibility of the laws of mechanics. To resolve both the problem of the meaning of entropy and that of the origin of irreversibility we have built entropy and irreversibility into the laws of mechanics. The result is a theory that we call quantum thermodynamics that has all the necessary properties to combine mechanics and thermodynamics uniting all the successful results of both theories, eliminating the logical inconsistencies of statistical mechanics and the paradox on irreversibiiity, and providing an entirely new perspective on the microscopic origin of irreversibility, nonlinearity and therefore chaotic behavior. The mathematical formalism of quantum thermodynamics differs from that of statistical mechanics mainly in the equation of motion which is nonlinear but has solutions identical to those of the Schrodinger equation for all the states for which statistical mechanics reduces to quantum mechanics. The physical meaning of the formalism of quantum thermodynamics differs more drastically from that of statistical mechanics. The significance of the state operator of quantum thermodynamics is entirely different from that of the density operator of statistical mechanics, even though the two are mathematically equivalent. Indeed they obey different equations of motion. In particular, quantum thermodynamics is concerned only with those systems for which quantum mechanics would describe the states with vectors in Hilbert space or, equivalently, projection operators. Using a well known jargon, we can say that quantum thermodynamics like quantum mechanics is concerned only with pure quantum states. However, it postulates that the set of pure quantum states of a system is much broader than contemplated by quantum mechanics. Pure quantum states must be described by operators defined by all the features of projection operators except the condition of idempotence. As a result, an operator that within statistical mechanics would describe a mixed quantum state (that is, the average state of a statistical mixture of identical systems in different pure quantum states) in quantum thermodynamics describes a pure quantum state, a state that neither quantum mechanics non statistical mechanics would contemplate. Conceptually, the increased richness of pure quantum states is a new revolutionary postulate of quantum physics. But from the point of view of the statistical mechanics practitioners the new theory is not as traumatic as it seems. Whenever one uses a nonidempotent density operator to describe a thermodynamic equilibrium state one simply has to reinterpret it as one of the new pure quantum states. One even saves the usual ad hoc arguments on thermal baths and reservoirs that are usually required in statistical mechanics to justify the use of a nonidempotent density operator to describe the state of a system. In this paper we discuss the background and formalism of quantum thermodynamics including its nonlinear equation of motion and the main general results. Our objective is to show in a not-too-technical manner that this theory provides indeed a complete and coherent resolution of the century-old dilemma on the meaning of entropy and the origin of irreversibility. As a byproduct, we discuss a long set of criteria that a theory should meet in order to afford the same claim.
I. Introduction.Statistical mechanics is the science of explaining, predicting and understanding the gross, macroscopic attributes of matter (which may be taken to mean mechanical systems with essentially an infinite number of degrees of freedom) in terms of the elementary dynamical laws governing its atomic constituents.The problems that arise are sufficiently complex and intriguing, but at the same time sufficiently well posed, that the subject is nowadays as much a part of mathematics as of physics.The fields of information theory and ergodic theory had their genesis in statistical mechanical modes of thought and are now well established in the mathematics literature; there will be more to come.Ludwig Boltzmann, who died in 1906, was one of the principal founders of statistical mechanics, and his monument in Vienna contains the following eloquent testimonial to his scientific creativity:(1) S = k log W.Surely, this hypothesis of Boltzmann [1] is one of the most important and daring in statistical mechanics, for it relates S, the macroscopic entropy of a system, to W, the number of microscopic states of the system which have the same, given macroscopic properties.The number k is a universal constant, called Boltzmann's constant, and, for our purposes, we can consider it to be 1.In these lectures we shall explore some of the abstract properties of entropy, after first giving a precise formulation of it, and will include some recent results (with M. B. Ruskai) which extend formerly known facts about the strong subadditivity of entropy from the domain of classical mechanics to the quantum-mechanical domain.The presentation here will be sketchy and the reader is referred to the original papers [3], [4], [5] for more details.An expanded version of an invited address delivered before the M.I.T.
In these decades, it has been revealed that there is rich information-theoretic structure in thermodynamics of out-of-equilibrium systems in both the classical and quantum regimes. This has led to the fruitful interplay among statistical physics, quantum information theory, and mathematical theories including matrix analysis and asymptotic probability theory. The main purpose of this book is to clarify how information theory works behind thermodynamics and to shed modern light on it. We focus on both of purely information-theoretic concepts and their physical implications: We present self-contained and rigorous proofs of several fundamental properties of entropies, divergences, and majorization. We also discuss the modern formulations of thermodynamics, especially from the perspectives of stochastic thermodynamics and resource theory of thermodynamics. Resource theory is a recently-developed field as a branch of quantum information theory in order to quantify (energetically or information-theoretically) "useful resources." We show that resource theory has an intrinsic connection to various fundamental ideas of mathematics and information theory. This book is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the field, but would serve as a concise introduction to several important ingredients of the information-theoretic formulation of thermodynamics.