Law Behind Second Law of Thermodynamics --Unification with Cosmology--

We take up the question why the initial entropy in the universe was small, in the context of evolution of the entropy of a classical system. We note that coarse-graining is a an important aspect of entropy evaluation which can reverse the direction of the increase in entropy, i.e., the direction of thermodynamic arrow of time. Then we investigate the role of decoherence in the selection of coarse-graining and explain how to compute entropy for a decohered classical system. Fi...

064<p type="texpara" tag="Body Text" et="abstract" bin="clone" >There are two schools, or lines of thought, that try to unify the apparently divergent laws of dynamics and thermodynamics and to explain the observed time-asymmetry of the universe, and most of its sub-systems, in spite of the fact that these systems are driven by time-symmetric evolution equations. They will be called the coarse-graining and the fine-graining schools (even if these names describe only a part of...

The second law of thermodynamics states that for a thermally isolated system entropy never decreases. Most physical processes we observe in nature involve variations of macroscopic quantities over spatial and temporal scales much larger than microscopic molecular collision scales and thus can be considered as in local equilibrium. For a many-body system in local equilibrium a stronger version of the second law applies which says that the entropy production at each spacetime p...

Equilibrium statistics of Hamiltonian systems is correctly described by the microcanonical ensemble, whereas canonical ones fail in the most interesting, mostly inhomogeneous, situations like phase separations or away from the thermodynamic ``limit'' (e.g. self-gravitating systems and small quantum systems). A new derivation of the Second Law is presented that respects these fundamental complications. Our ``geometric foundation of Thermo-Statistics'' opens the fundamental (ax...

There is a paradox in the standard model of cosmology. How can matter in the early universe have been in thermal equilibrium, indicating maximum entropy, but the initial state also have been low entropy (the "past hypothesis"), so as to underpin the second law of thermodynamics? The problem has been highly contested, with the only consensus being that gravity plays a role in the story, but with the exact mechanism undecided. In this paper, we construct a well-defined mechanic...

This article provides answers to the two questions posed in the title. It is argued that, contrary to many statements made in the literature, neither entropy, nor the Second Law may be used for the entire universe. The origin of this misuse of entropy and the second law may be traced back to Clausius himself. More resent (erroneous) justification is also discussed.

In this letter, we investigate the validity of the generalized second law of thermodynamics of the universe bounded by the event horizon in the holographic dark energy model. The universe is chosen to be homogeneous and isotropic and the validity of the first law has been assumed here. The matter in the universe is taken in the form of non-interacting two fluid system- one component is the holographic dark energy model and the other component is in the form of dust.

This article puts forward a model of the formation of the universe, whose essential novel ingredient is a pre-Universe reservoir $\mathrm{R_U}$ with neither space nor time dimensions, in interaction with the universe U. U results from a process of apparition of spacetime entities emanating from the ur-elements in $\mathrm{R_U}$. The analysis of this apparition relies on a few principles like the second law and the principle of conservation of energy, applied to the thermodyna...

In a macroscopic (quantum or classical) Hamiltonian system, we prove the second law of thermodynamics in the forms of the minimum work principle and the law of entropy increase, under the assumption that the initial state is described by a general equilibrium distribution. Therefore the second law is a logical necessity once we accept equilibrium statistical mechanics.

The first part of this paper is a summary of a hypothesis previously advanced, suggesting the existence of a close link between thermodynamics and relativity. The second part is a preliminary comment about some possible consequences in the fields of physics, astronomy and biology.