1306.4563 (Raphael Chetrite et al.)

Nonequilibrium microcanonical and canonical ensembles and their
equivalence    [PDF]

Raphael Chetrite, Hugo Touchette

Generalizations of the microcanonical and canonical ensembles for paths of Markov processes have been proposed recently to describe the statistical properties of nonequilibrium systems driven in steady states. Here we propose a theory of these ensembles that unifies and generalizes earlier results, and show how it is fundamentally related to the large deviation properties of nonequilibrium systems. Using this theory, we provide conditions for the equivalence of nonequilibrium ensembles, generalizing those found for equilibrium systems, construct Markov processes that generate these ensembles, and re-derive in a simple way known and new product rules for their transition rates. A nonequilibrium diffusion model is used to illustrate these results.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.4563