Microscopic approach to entropy production

Abstract

It is a great challenge of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics to calculate entropy production within a microscopic theory. In the framework of linear irreversible thermodynamics, we combine the Mori-Zwanzig-Forster projection operator technique with the first and second law of thermodynamics to obtain microscopic expressions for the entropy production as well as for the transport equations of the entropy density and its time correlation function. We further present a microscopic derivation of a dissipation functional from which the dissipative dynamics of an extended dynamical density functional theory can be obtained in a formally elegant way.