Reciprocity relations in thermodynamics

Abstract

Dissipative time evolution of macroscopic systems describing the experimentally observed approach to reduced descriptions is put into the context of contact geometry. This viewpoint of nonequilibrium thermodynamics unifies many well-established mesoscopic dynamical theories, as for example the Boltzmann kinetic theory and the Navier–Stokes–Fourier hydrodynamics, and leads to new reciprocity relations that extend the Maxwell and the Onsager–Casimir relations.