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Updated: Aug 12, 2026

An Analog Macroscopic Technique for Studying Molecular Hydrodynamic Processes in Dense Gases and Liquids
Published on: December 4, 2017
Generalized thermodynamics and Fokker-Planck equations: applications to stellar dynamics and two-dimensional
1Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, Université Paul Sabatier, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse Cedex 4, France. chavanis@irsamc.ups.tlse.fr
Abstract:
We introduce a class of generalized Fokker-Planck equations that conserve energy and mass and increase a generalized entropy functional until a maximum entropy state is reached. Nonlinear Fokker-Planck equations associated with Tsallis entropies are a special case of these equations. Applications of these results to stellar dynamics and vortex dynamics are proposed. Our prime result is a relaxation equation that should offer an easily implementable parametrization of two-dimensional turbulence. Usual parametrizations (including a single turbulent viscosity) correspond to the infinite temperature limit of our model. They forget a fundamental systematic drift that acts against diffusion as in Brownian theory. Our generalized Fokker-Planck equations can have applications in other fields of physics such as chemotaxis for bacterial populations. We propose the idea of a classification of generalized entropies in "classes of equivalence" and provide an aesthetic connection between topics (vortices, stars, bacteria, em leader ) which were previously disconnected.
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