Roles of energy and entropy in multiscale dynamics and thermodynamics

Abstract

Multiscale thermodynamics is a theory of relations among levels of description. Energy and entropy are its two main ingredients. Their roles in the time evolution describing approach of a level (starting level) to another level involving less details (target level) is examined on several examples, including the level on which macroscopic systems are seen as composed of microscopic particles, mesoscopic levels as kinetic theory of ideal and van der Waals gases, fluid mechanics, the level of chemical kinetics, and the level of equilibrium thermodynamics. The entropy enters the emergence of the target level in two roles. It expresses internal energy, that is the part of the energy that cannot be expressed in terms of the state variables used on the starting level, and it reveals emerging features characterizing the target level by sweeping away unimportant details. In the case when the target level is a mesoscopic level involving time evolution the roles of the energy and the entropy is taken by two different potentials that are related to their rates.