Journal
PHYSICS LETTERS A
Volume 375, Issue 2, Pages 88-92Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.physleta.2010.11.002
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The maximum work formulation of the second law of thermodynamics is generalized for a transition between nonequilibrium states. The relative entropy, the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the nonequilibrium states and the canonical distribution, determines the maximum ability to work. The difference between the final and the initial relative entropies with an effective temperature gives the maximum dissipative work for both adiabatic and isothermal processes. Our formulation reduces to both the Vaikuntanathan-Jarzynski relation and the nonequilibrium Clausius relation in certain situations. By applying our formulation to a heat engine the Carnot cycle is generalized to a circulation among nonequilibrium states. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available