Zeroth law of thermodynamics for nonequilibrium steady states in contact

Abstract

We ask what happens when two systems having a nonequilibrium steady state are kept in contact and allowed to exchange a quantity, say mass, which is conserved in the combined system. Will the systems eventually evolve to a new stationary state where certain intensive thermodynamic variable, like equilibrium chemical potential, equalizes following zeroth law of thermodynamics and, if so, under what conditions is it possible? We argue that the zeroth law would hold, provided both systems have short-ranged spatial correlations and they {\it interact weakly} to exchange mass with rates satisfying a balance condition - reminiscent of detailed balance in equilibrium. This proposition is proved for driven systems in general in the limit of small exchange rates (i.e., weak interaction) and is demonstrated} in various conserved-mass transport processes having nonzero spatial correlations.