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Thermalization of a Brownian particle via coupling to low-dimensional chaos

Christopher Jarzynski

chao-dynarXiv:chao-dyn/9501028

Abstract

It is shown that a paradigm of classical statistical mechanics --- the thermalization of a Brownian particle --- has a low-dimensional, deterministic analogue: when a heavy, slow system is coupled to fast deterministic chaos, the resultant forces drive the slow degrees of freedom toward a state of statistical equilibrium with the fast degrees. This illustrates how concepts useful in statistical mechanics may apply in situations where low-dimensional chaos exists.

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