Student Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

1969

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis Advisor

George Uhlenbeck

Keywords

non-equilibrium thermodynamics, Onsager-Machlup theory, Brownian motion, generalized theory, statistical mechanics, Langevin dynamics

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to present a generalization of the current theory of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. The current theory was presented in 1953 by Onsager and Machlup, its mathematical context goes back to the 1930 paper of Uhlenbeck and Ornstein on Brownian motion, and the physical foundations for that approach go back to the initial theoretical work on Brownian motion done by Einstein in 1905 and by Langevin in 1908. It will be demonstrated how the ideas presented by these men lead in a natural way to a generalization of the current theory. It will then be shown how the generalized theory extends the domain of applicability of non-equilibrium thermodynamics.

Comments

A thesis presented to the faculty of The Rockefeller University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

License and Reuse Information

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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