Principle of maximum entropy and irreversible processes

Abstract

More than twenty years have passed since E.T. Jaynes pioneered the information-theoretic approach to the foundations of statistical mechanics. In the intervening period numerous applications have been worked out and new insights developed into traditional problems. Although the natural extension of these ideas to nonequilibrium statistical mechanics and irreversible processes has also been formulated, and both theory and applications have been considerably developed, much of this work has not appeared in the open literature. Yet the basic ideas and consequent theory seem to have an extraordinary unifying and illuminating effect on the foundations of the many-body problem, as well as providing a transparent conceptual basis from which to view various groups of problems not previously formulated in a particularly sharp way. The aim of this review is to summarize these developments in the context of the principle of maximum entropy.