nLab dissipation

Dissipation in a thermodynamic system is an irreversible loss of ability to do work in a system; in other words, the energy gets converted into its forms which are inaccessible for work eventually due to the second law of thermodynamics. For example, dissipation of a mechanical energy to the heat absorbed by the environment via friction.

Often dissipation can be accounted for by working with non-Hermitean effective Hamiltonians.

Literature

Related entries: fluctuation-dissipation theorem, Langevin equation, statistical physics

• wikipedia: dissipation
• R. P. Feynman, F. L. Vernon, Jr. The theory of a general quantum system interacting with a linear dissipative system, Annals of Physics 24 (1963) 118–173, reprinted in Annals of Physics 281(1-2) 547–607 (2000) doi:10.1006/aphy.2000.6017
• Leggett, A. J., Chakravarty, S. D. A. F. M. G. A., Dorsey, A. T., Fisher, M. P., Garg, A., & Zwerger, W. Dynamics of the dissipative two-state system, Reviews of Modern Physics, 59(1) (1987) 1

category: physics