Nonequilibrium Fluctuations in a Gaussian Galton Board (or Periodic Lorentz Gas) Using Long Periodic Orbits

Abstract

Predicting nonequilibrium fluctuations requires a knowledge of nonequilibrium distribution functions. Despite the distributions' fractal character some theoretical results, "Fluctuation Theorems", reminiscent of but distinct from, Gibbs' equilibrium statistical mechanics and the Central Limit Theorem, have been established away from equilibrium and applied to simple models. We summarize the simplest of these results for a Gaussian-thermostated Galton Board problem, a field-driven mass point moving through a periodic array of hard-disk scatterers. The billion-collision trillion-timestep data we analyze correspond to periodic orbits with up to 793,951,594 collisions and 447,064,397,614 timesteps.