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Updated: May 27, 2026

An Analog Macroscopic Technique for Studying Molecular Hydrodynamic Processes in Dense Gases and Liquids
Published on: December 4, 2017
On the entropy of relaxing deterministic systems
Denis J Evans1, Stephen R Williams, Debra J Searles
1Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.
Abstract:
In this paper, we re-visit Gibbs' second (unresolved) paradox, namely the constancy of the fine-grained Gibbs entropy for autonomous Hamiltonian systems. We compare and contrast the different roles played by dissipation and entropy both at equilibrium where dissipation is identically zero and away from equilibrium where entropy cannot be defined and seems unnecessary in any case. Away from equilibrium dissipation is a powerful quantity that can always be defined and that appears as the central argument of numerous exact theorems: the fluctuation, relaxation, and dissipation theorems and the newly derived Clausius inequality.
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