Saturday, October 11, 2014

thermodynamics - Microscopic Definition of Heat and Work


If I am given a statistical system, then I can define state-variables like Energy, Entropy or other observables, and then I can (at least for equilibrium states) give the infinitesimal change of energy as:


dE=TdS+Kdx


Here x means any observable and K means the depending force, for example if x is the volume V, then K is minus the pressure p. What I read all the time is


dE=δQ+δW


Is there a general microscopic way to define what part of the above formula is δW and what part is δQ ?


For example, for reversible processes, δQ=TdS and δW=Kdx. But what if I'm looking at an arbitrary process?




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