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One of the questions about which humanity has often wondered is the
arrow of time. Why does temporal evolution seem irreversible? That
is, we often see objects break into pieces, but we never see them
reconstitute spontaneously. This observation was first put into
scientific terms by the so-called second law of thermodynamics:
entropy never decreases. However, this law does not explain the
origin of irreversibly; it only quantifies it. Kinetic theory gives
a consistent explanation of irreversibility based on a statistical
description of the motion of electrons, atoms, and molecules. The
concepts of kinetic theory have been applied to innumerable
situations including electronics, the production of particles in
the early universe, the dynamics of astrophysical plasmas, quantum
gases or the motion of small microorganisms in water, with
excellent quantitative agreement. This book presents the
fundamentals of kinetic theory, considering classical paradigmatic
examples as well as modern applications. It covers the most
important systems where kinetic theory is applied, explaining their
major features. The text is balanced between exploring the
fundamental concepts of kinetic theory (irreversibility, transport
processes, separation of time scales, conservations, coarse
graining, distribution functions, etc.) and the results and
predictions of the theory, where the relevant properties of
different systems are computed.
One of the questions about which humanity has often wondered is the
arrow of time. Why does temporal evolution seem irreversible? That
is, we often see objects break into pieces, but we never see them
reconstitute spontaneously. This observation was first put into
scientific terms by the so-called second law of thermodynamics:
entropy never decreases. However, this law does not explain the
origin of irreversibly; it only quantifies it. Kinetic theory gives
a consistent explanation of irreversibility based on a statistical
description of the motion of electrons, atoms, and molecules. The
concepts of kinetic theory have been applied to innumerable
situations including electronics, the production of particles in
the early universe, the dynamics of astrophysical plasmas, quantum
gases or the motion of small microorganisms in water, with
excellent quantitative agreement. This book presents the
fundamentals of kinetic theory, considering classical paradigmatic
examples as well as modern applications. It covers the most
important systems where kinetic theory is applied, explaining their
major features. The text is balanced between exploring the
fundamental concepts of kinetic theory (irreversibility, transport
processes, separation of time scales, conservations, coarse
graining, distribution functions, etc.) and the results and
predictions of the theory, where the relevant properties of
different systems are computed.
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