Entropy Production Inequality Research Articles

Continuous dependence in thermopiezoelectricity of nonsimple materials

AbstractIn this paper, we consider the linear theory for a model of a thermopiezoelectric nonsimple body as presented in Passarella and Tibullo (Entropy, https://doi.org/10.3390/e24091229. 2022) in which the second displacement gradient and the second electric potential gradient are included in the set of independent constitutive variables, adopting an entropy production inequality model proposed by Green and Laws. We set a mixed initial-boundary value problem and starting from two solutions we establish a reciprocity relation for the general case, which extends the analogue in Ciarletta et al. (Mech Res Commun, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mechrescom.2022.103969, 2022), and two continuous dependence theorems for centrosymmetric materials. Both theorems consider the difference of two solutions of the problem: the first one depends only from supply terms, which are the external body forces, electric charge density and heat supply and the second one only depends from initial data for displacement, velocity, relative temperature and entropy fields. All these data, together with the boundary conditions, are assigned.

Strain gradient thermopiezoelectric materials

Results from the linear theory of thermopiezoelectricity are discussed in this article. A brief introduction to dielectric materials and the phenomenon of direct and inverse piezoelectricity is given. Then, a general theory of thermopiezoelectricity for strain gradient materials is given, where the second gradient of the displacement field and electric potential enter into the set of independent constitutive variables. The second law of thermodynamics is formulated following an entropy production inequality proposed by Green and Laws. The thermodynamics restrictions are obtained, then the linear constitutive equations and the mixed initial-boundary value problem are established. On the basis of this theory, a uniqueness result and a variational principle are obtained.

Constructive stability results in interpolation inequalities and explicit improvements of decay rates of fast diffusion equations

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>We provide a scheme of a recent stability result for a family of Gagliardo-Nirenberg-Sobolev (GNS) inequalities, which is equivalent to an improved entropy – entropy production inequality associated with an appropriate fast diffusion equation (FDE) written in self-similar variables. This result can be rephrased as an improved decay rate of the entropy of the solution of (FDE) for well prepared initial data. There is a family of Caffarelli-Kohn-Nirenberg (CKN) inequalities which has a very similar structure. When the exponents are in a range for which the optimal functions for (CKN) are radially symmetric, we investigate how the methods for (GNS) can be extended to (CKN). In particular, we prove that the solutions of the evolution equation associated to (CKN) also satisfy an improved decay rate of the entropy, after an explicit delay. However, the improved rate is obtained without assuming that initial data are well prepared, which is a major difference with the (GNS) case.</p>

Uniqueness of Solutions in Thermopiezoelectricity of Nonsimple Materials.

This article presents the theory of thermopiezoelectricity in which the second displacement gradient and the second electric potential gradient are included in the set of independent constitutive variables. This is achieved by using the entropy production inequality proposed by Green and Laws. At first, appropriate thermodynamic restrictions and constitutive equations are obtained, using the well-established Coleman and Noll procedure. Then, the balance equations and the constitutive equations of linear theory are derived, and the mixed initial-boundary value problem is set. For this problem a uniqueness result is established. Next, the basic equations for the isotropic case are derived. Finally, a set of inequalities is obtained for the constant constitutive coefficients of the isotropic case that, on the basis on the previous theorem, ensure the uniqueness of the solution of the mixed initial-boundary value problem.

Some results on thermopiezoelectricity of nonsimple materials

In this paper, we consider the linear theory for a model of a thermopiezoelectric nonsimple material as presentated in Passarella and Tibullo (2022), adopting the entropy production inequality proposed by Green and Laws. We establish reciprocity theorems and a variational principle for homogeneous and anisotropic thermopiezoelectric nonsimple materials with a center of symmetry. The proof of these theorems use the time convolution product and an alternative formulation of the field equations. Moreover, a uniqueness result is established without using the definiteness assumptions on internal energy.

Continuous thermomajorization and a complete set of laws for Markovian thermal processes

The standard dynamical approach to quantum thermodynamics is based on Markovian master equations describing the thermalization of a system weakly coupled to a large environment, and on tools such as entropy production relations. Here we develop a new framework overcoming the limitations that the current dynamical and information theory approaches encounter when applied to this setting. More precisely, we introduce the notion of continuous thermomajorization, and employ it to obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a Markovian thermal process transforming between given initial and final energy distributions of the system. These lead to a complete set of generalized entropy production inequalities including the standard one as a special case. Importantly, these conditions can be reduced to a finitely verifiable set of constraints governing non-equilibrium transformations under master equations. What is more, the framework is also constructive, i.e., it returns explicit protocols realizing any allowed transformation. These protocols use as building blocks elementary thermalizations, which we prove to be universal controls. Finally, we also present an algorithm constructing the full set of energy distributions achievable from a given initial state via Markovian thermal processes and provide a $\texttt{Mathematica}$ implementation solving $d=6$ on a laptop computer in minutes.

A lower bound for the spectral gap of the conjugate Kac process with 3 interacting particles

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>In this paper, we proceed as suggested in the final section of [<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b2">2</xref>] and prove a lower bound for the spectral gap of the conjugate Kac process with 3 interacting particles. This bound turns out to be around <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ 0.02 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>, which is already physically meaningful, and we perform Monte Carlo simulations to provide a better empirical estimate for this value via entropy production inequalities. This finishes a complete quantitative estimate of the spectral gap of the Kac process.</p>

A constitutive framework for finite viscoelasticity and damage based on the Gram–Schmidt decomposition

A novel thermodynamic framework for the continuum mechanical response of nonlinear solids is described. Large deformations, nonlinear hyperelasticity, viscoelasticity, and property changes due to evolution of damage in the material are all encompassed by the general theory. The deformation gradient is decomposed in Gram–Schmidt fashion into the product of an orthogonal matrix and an upper triangular matrix, where the latter can be populated by six independent strain attributes. Strain attributes, in turn, are used as fundamental independent variables in the thermodynamic potentials, rather than the usual scalar invariants of deformation tensors as invoked in more conventional approaches. A complementary set of internal variables also enters the thermodynamic potentials to enable history and rate dependence, i.e., viscoelasticity, and irreversible stiffness degradation, i.e., damage. Governing equations and thermodynamic restrictions imposed by the entropy production inequality are derived. Mechanical, thermodynamic, and kinetic relations are presented for material symmetries that reduce to cubic or isotropic thermoelasticity in the small strain limit, restricted to isotropic damage. Representative models and example problems demonstrate utility and flexibility of this theory for depicting nonlinear hyperelasticity, viscoelasticity, and/or damage from cracks or voids, with physically measurable parameters.

A coupled mass transport and deformation theory of multi-constituent tumor growth

We develop a general class of thermodynamically consistent, continuum models based on mixture theory with phase effects that describe the behavior of a mass of multiple interacting constituents. The constituents consist of solid species undergoing large elastic deformations and incompressible viscous fluids. The fundamental building blocks framing the mixture theories consist of the mass balance law of diffusing species and microscopic (cellular scale) and macroscopic (tissue scale) force balances, as well as energy balance and the entropy production inequality derived from the first and second laws of thermodynamics. A general phase-field framework is developed by closing the system through postulating constitutive equations (i.e., specific forms of free energy and rate of dissipation potentials) to depict the growth of tumors in a microenvironment. A notable feature of this theory is that it contains a unified continuum mechanics framework for addressing the interactions of multiple species evolving in both space and time and involved in biological growth of soft tissues (e.g., tumor cells and nutrients). The formulation also accounts for the regulating roles of the mechanical deformation on the growth of tumors, through a physically and mathematically consistent coupled diffusion and deformation framework. A new algorithm for numerical approximation of the proposed model using mixed finite elements is presented. The results of numerical experiments indicate that the proposed theory captures critical features of avascular tumor growth in the various microenvironment of living tissue, in agreement with the experimental studies in the literature.

A non-local damage model for the fatigue behaviour of metallic polycrystals

ABSTRACT The development of fatigue damage in metallic materials is a complex process influenced by both intrinsic (e.g. texture, defects) and extrinsic (e.g. loading mode, frequency) factors. To better understand this process, some efforts have been made to develop microstructure-sensitive models that consider the impact of microstructural heterogeneities on the formation of fatigue cracks. An important limitation of such models is their inability to describe the transition between the nucleation and growth stages in a consistent thermodynamic framework. To circumvent this limitation, a constitutive model, which is appropriate for the description of both nucleation and early growth, is proposed. For this purpose, non-local damage mechanics is used to construct a set of constitutive relations that explicitly considers the progressive stiffness reduction due to the formation of fatigue cracks. Specifically, a damage variable is attached to each slip system, which allows considering both the anisotropic aspect of fatigue damage and closure effects. The spatial gradients of the damage variables are treated as additional state variables to account for the increase of surface energy associated with the formation of fatigue cracks. For the evolution equations to be compatible with the second law of thermodynamics, a modified form of the entropy production inequality is adopted. For illustration purposes, the non-local damage model is implemented in a spectral solver. Some numerical examples are then presented. These examples allow discussing the ability of the proposed model to describe the impact of loading conditions and pre-existing defects on the fatigue behaviour of metallic polycrystals.

Global regularity and convergence to equilibrium of reaction\u2013diffusion systems with nonlinear diffusion

We study the boundedness and convergence to equilibrium of weak solutions to reaction–diffusion systems with nonlinear diffusion. The nonlinear diffusion is of porous medium type, and the nonlinear reaction terms are assumed to grow polynomially and to dissipate (or conserve) the total mass. By utilising duality estimates, the dissipation of the total mass and the smoothing effect of the porous medium equation, we prove that if the exponents of the nonlinear diffusion terms are high enough, then weak solutions are bounded, locally Hölder continuous and their L^{infty }(Omega )-norm grows in time at most polynomially. In order to show convergence to equilibrium, we consider a specific class of nonlinear reaction–diffusion models, which describe a single reversible reaction with arbitrarily many chemical substances. By exploiting a generalised logarithmic Sobolev inequality, an indirect diffusion effect and the polynomial in time growth of the L^{infty }(Omega )-norm, we show an entropy–entropy production inequality which implies exponential convergence to equilibrium in L^p(Omega )-norm, for any 1le p < infty , with explicit rates and constants.

Homogenization of degenerate cross-diffusion systems

Two-scale homogenization limits of parabolic cross-diffusion systems in a heterogeneous medium with no-flux boundary conditions are proved. The heterogeneity of the medium is reflected in the diffusion coefficients or by the perforated domain. The diffusion matrix is of degenerate type and may be neither symmetric nor positive semi-definite, but the diffusion system is assumed to satisfy an entropy structure. Uniform estimates are derived from the entropy production inequality. New estimates on the equicontinuity with respect to the time variable ensure the strong convergence of a sequence of solutions to the microscopic problems defined in perforated domains.

φ-Entropies: convexity, coercivity and hypocoercivity for Fokker–Planck and kinetic Fokker–Planck equations

This paper is devoted to [Formula: see text]-entropies applied to Fokker–Planck and kinetic Fokker–Planck equations in the whole space, with confinement. The so-called [Formula: see text]-entropies are Lyapunov functionals which typically interpolate between Gibbs entropies and [Formula: see text] estimates. We review some of their properties in the case of diffusion equations of Fokker–Planck type, give new and simplified proofs, and then adapt these methods to a kinetic Fokker–Planck equation acting on a phase space with positions and velocities. At kinetic level, since the diffusion only acts on the velocity variable, the transport operator plays an essential role in the relaxation process. Here we adopt the [Formula: see text] point of view and establish a sharp decay rate. Rather than giving general but quantitatively vague estimates, our goal here is to consider simple cases, benchmark available methods and obtain sharp estimates on a key example. Some [Formula: see text]-entropies give rise to improved entropy–entropy production inequalities and, as a consequence, to faster decay rates for entropy estimates of solutions to non-degenerate diffusion equations. We prove that faster entropy decay also holds at kinetic level away from equilibrium and that optimal decay rates are achieved only in asymptotic regimes.

Entropy production inequalities for the Kac Walk

Mark Kac introduced what is now called 'the Kac Walk' with the aim of investigating the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation by probabilistic means. Much recent work, discussed below, on Kac's program has run in the other direction: using recent results on the Boltzmann equation, or its one-dimensional analog, the non-linear Kac-Boltzmann equation, to prove results for the Kac Walk. Here we investigate new functional inequalities for the Kac Walk pertaining to entropy production, and introduce a new form of 'chaoticity'. We then show how these entropy production inequalities imply entropy production inequalities for the Kac-Boltzmann equation. This results validate Kac's program for proving results on the non-linear Boltzmann equation via analysis of the Kac Walk, and they constitute a partial solution to the 'Almost' Cercignani Conjecture on the sphere.

On the entropy method and exponential convergence to equilibrium for a recombination–drift–diffusion system with self-consistent potential

We consider a Shockley–Read–Hall recombination–drift–diffusion model coupled to Poisson’s equation and subject to boundary conditions, which imply conservation of the total charge. As main result, we derive an explicit functional inequality between relative entropy and entropy production rate, which implies exponential convergence to equilibrium with explicit constant and rate. We report that the key entropy–entropy production inequality ought rather not to be formulated on the states space of the parabolic–elliptic system, but on the reduced states space of the associated nonlocal drift–diffusion problem, where the Poisson equation is replaced by the corresponding Green function.

Edge stabilization and consistent tying of constituents at Neumann boundaries in multi‐constituent mixture models

SummaryA mixture‐theory‐based model for multi‐constituent solids is presented where each constituent is governed by its own balance laws and constitutive equations. Interactive forces between constituents that emanate from maximization of entropy production inequality provide the coupling between constituent‐specific balance laws and constitutive models. The deformation of multi‐constituent mixtures at the Neumann boundaries requires imposing inter‐constituent coupling constraints such that the constituents deform in a self‐consistent fashion. A set of boundary conditions is presented that accounts for the non‐zero applied tractions, and a variationally consistent method is developed to enforce inter‐constituent constraints at Neumann boundaries in the finite deformation context. The new method finds roots in a local multiscale decomposition of the deformation map at the Neumann boundary. Locally satisfying the Lagrange multiplier field and subsequent modeling of the fine scales via edge bubble functions result in closed‐form expressions for a generalized penalty tensor and a weighted numerical flux that are free from tunable parameters. The key novelty is that the consistently derived constituent coupling parameters evolve with material and geometric nonlinearity, thereby resulting in optimal enforcement of inter‐constituent constraints. Various benchmark problems are presented to validate the method and show its range of application. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Weighted fast diffusion equations (Part Ⅰ): Sharp asymptotic rates without symmetry and symmetry breaking in Caffarelli-Kohn-Nirenberg inequalities

In this paper we consider a family of Caffarelli-Kohn-Nirenberg interpolation inequalities (CKN), with two radial power law weights and exponents in a subcritical range. We address the question of symmetry breaking: are the optimal functions radially symmetric, or not ? Our intuition comes from a weighted fast diffusion (WFD) flow: if symmetry holds, then an explicit entropy - entropy production inequality which governs the intermediate asymptotics is indeed equivalent to (CKN), and the self-similar profiles are optimal for (CKN). We establish an explicit symmetry breaking condition by proving the linear instability of the radial optimal functions for (CKN). Symmetry breaking in (CKN) also has consequences on entropy - entropy production inequalities and on the intermediate asymptotics for (WFD). Even when no symmetry holds in (CKN), asymptotic rates of convergence of the solutions to (WFD) are determined by a weighted Hardy-Poincar{e} inequality which is interpreted as a linearized entropy - entropy production inequality. All our results rely on the study of the bottom of the spectrum of the linearized diffusion operator around the self-similar profiles, which is equivalent to the linearization of (CKN) around the radial optimal functions, and on variational methods. Consequences for the (WFD) flow will be studied in Part II of this work.

Interpolation Inequalities, Nonlinear Flows, Boundary Terms, Optimality and Linearization

This paper is devoted to the computation of the asymptotic boundary terms in entropy methods applied to a fast diffusion equation with weights associated with Caffarelli-Kohn-Nirenberg interpolation inequalities. So far, only elliptic equations have been considered and our goal is to justify, at least partially, an extension of the carre du champ / Bakry-Emery / Renyi entropy methods to parabolic equations. This makes sense because evolution equations are at the core of the heuristics of the method even when only elliptic equations are considered, but this also raises difficult questions on the regularity and on the growth of the solutions in presence of weights. We also investigate the relations between the optimal constant in the entropy–en- tropy production inequality, the optimal constant in the information–information production inequality, the asymptotic growth rate of generalized Renyi entropy powers under the action of the evolution equation and the optimal range of parameters for symmetry breaking issues in Caffarelli-Kohn-Nirenberg inequalities, under the assumption that the weights do not introduce singular boundary terms at x = 0. These considerations are new even in the case without weights. For instance, we establish the equivalence of carre du champ and Renyi entropy methods and explain why entropy methods produce optimal constants in entropy–entropy production and Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequalities in absence of weights, or optimal symmetry ranges when weights are present.

Entropy bounds for quantum processes with initial correlations

Quantum technology is progressing towards fast quantum control over systems interacting with small environments. Hence such technologies are operating in a regime where the environment remembers the system's past, and the applicability of complete-positive trace preserving maps is no longer valid. The departure from complete positivity means many useful bounds, like entropy production, Holevo, and data processing inequality are no longer applicable to such systems. We address these issues by deriving a generalized bound for entropy valid for quantum dynamics with arbitrary system-environment correlations. We employ superchannels, which map quantum operations performed by the experimenter, represented in terms of completely positive maps, to states. Our bound has information-theoretic applications, as it generalizes the data processing inequality and the Holevo bound. We prove that both data processing inequality and the Holevo are valid even when system is correlated with the environment.

The Moser-Trudinger-Onofri inequality

This paper is devoted to results on the Moser-Trudinger-Onofri inequality, or Onofri inequality for brevity. In dimension two this inequality plays a role similar to the Sobolev inequality in higher dimensions. After justifying this statement by recovering the Onofri inequality through various limiting procedures and after reviewing some known results, we state several elementary remarks. We also prove various new results. We give a proof of the inequality using mass transportation methods (in the radial case), consistently with similar results for Sobolev's inequalities. We investigate how duality can be used to improve the Onofri inequality, in connection with the logarithmic Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequality. In the framework of fast diffusion equations, we establish that the inequality is an entropy--entropy production inequality, which provides an integral remainder term. Finally we give a proof of the inequality based on rigidity methods and introduce a related nonlinear flow.