Response theory: a trajectory-based approach

We collect recent results on deriving useful response relations also for nonequilibrium systems. The approach is based on dynamical ensembles, determined by an action on trajectory space. (Anti)Symmetry under time-reversal separates two complementary contributions in the response, one entropic the other frenetic. Under time-reversal invariance of the unperturbed reference process, only the entropic term is present in the response, giving the standard fluctuation-dissipation relations in equilibrium. For nonequilibrium reference ensembles, the frenetic term contributes essentially and is responsible for new phenomena. We discuss modifications in the Sutherland-Einstein relation, the occurence of negative differential mobilities and the saturation of response. We also indicate how the Einstein relation between noise and friction gets violated for probes coupled to a nonequilibrium environment. We end with some discussion on the situation for quantum phenomena, but the bulk of the text concerns classical mesoscopic (open) systems. The choice of many simple examples is trying to make the notes pedagogical, to introduce an important area of research in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics

The Fluctuation Theorem as a Gibbs Property

Common ground to recent studies exploiting relations between dynamical systems and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics is, so we argue, the standard Gibbs formalism applied on the level of space-time histories. The assumptions (chaoticity principle) underlying the Gallavotti-Cohen fluctuation theorem make it possible, using symbolic dynamics, to employ the theory of one-dimensional lattice spin systems. The Kurchan and Lebowitz-Spohn analysis of this fluctuation theorem for stochastic dynamics can be restated on the level of the space-time measure which is a Gibbs measure for an interaction determined by the transition probabilities. In this note we understand the fluctuation theorem as a Gibbs property as it follows from the very definition of Gibbs state. We give a local version of the fluctuation theorem in the Gibbsian context and we derive from this a version also for some class of spatially extended stochastic dynamics

No information or horizon paradoxes for Th. Smiths

'Th'e 'S'tatistical 'm'echanician 'i'n 'th'e 's'treet (our Th. Smiths) must be surprised upon hearing popular versions of some of today's most discussed paradoxes in astronomy and cosmology. In fact, rather standard reminders of the meaning of thermal probabilities in statistical mechanics appear to answer the horizon problem (one of the major motivations for inflation theory) and the information paradox (related to black hole physics), at least as they are usually presented. Still the paradoxes point to interesting gaps in our statistical understanding of (quantum) gravitational effects