From microscopic dynamics to macroscopic irreversibility

A. Perez-Madrid

Published 2006-09-19, updated 2006-10-02Version 2

In this contribution we prove that the entropy of an N-body isolated system can not decrease and the entropy production should be non-negative provided the system possesses an equilibrium state. We define the entropy as a functional of the set of n-particle reduced density operators (n=0,....,N) generalizing the von Neumann fine-grained entropy formula. Additionally, as a consequence of our analysis we find the expression of the equilibrium n-particle reduced density operators which enter the definition of the entropy as well as the dissipated energy in an irreversible process.