Physics – Nuclear Physics – Nuclear Theory
Scientific paper
1995-05-08
Phys.Rept.272:1-59,1996
Physics
Nuclear Physics
Nuclear Theory
Review article, 78 pages, uuencoded compressed PostScript file
Scientific paper
10.1016/0370-1573(95)00077-1
The transition from reversible microdynamics to irreversible transport can be studied very efficiently with the help of the so-called projection method. We give a concise introduction to that method, illustrate its power by using it to analyze the well-known rate and quantum Boltzmann equations, and present, as a new application, the derivation of a source term accounting for the spontaneous creation of electron-positron pairs in strong fields. Thereby we emphasize the fundamental importance of time scales: only if the various time scales exhibited by the dynamics are widely disparate, can the evolution of the slower degrees of freedom be described by a conventional Markovian transport equation; otherwise, one must account for finite memory effects. We show how the projection method can be employed to determine these time scales, and how --if necessary-- it allows one to include memory effects in a straightforward manner. Finally, there is an appendix in which we discuss the concepts of entropy and macroscopic irreversibility.
Müller Berndt
Rau Johannes
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