The Mirrors Model : Macroscopic Diffusion Without Noise or Chaos

Abstract

We first clarify through classical examples the status of the laws of macroscopic physics as laws of large numbers. We next consider the mirrors model in a finite $d$-dimensional domain and connected to particles reservoirs at fixed chemical potentials. The dynamics is purely deterministic and non-ergodic. We study the macroscopic current of particles in the stationary regime. We show first that when the size of the system goes to infinity, the behaviour of the stationary current of particles is governed by the proportion of orbits crossing the system. This allows to formulate a necessary and sufficient condition on the distribution of the set of orbits that ensures the validity of Fick's law. Using this approach, we show that Fick's law relating the stationary macroscopic current of particles to the concentration difference holds in three dimensions and above. The negative correlations between crossing orbits play a key role in the argument.