Soft Matter and Complex Systems Seminar

We recently introduced a new framework for the global non-equilibrium thermodynamics of stationary states. The theory takes as input the spatial distributions of temperature, density, velocity, and other variables in a stationary state. It then yields global state parameters that describe the system’s energy exchange with its environment, while notably not placing entropy at the center of the formulation.The framework provides a second law of non-equilibrium thermodynamics for stationary states and predicts the direction of spontaneous processes between them. We illustrate the theory using several instructive examples, including Rayleigh–Bénard convection and systems driven by electric fields.When all macroscopic fluxes vanish, the theory reduces to equilibrium thermodynamics.