The Second Law of Thermodynamics - Fluctuation Relations

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There's been a revolution in statistical mechanics over the last 20 years. Fluctuation relations are stronger versions of the second law of thermo dynamics. They give us also more information, ind that if you perform the same experiment many, many times, then you might get different outcomes in different trials. And from some fluctuation relations, we canler about the probability of the next trial. Am we can do all sorts of things with fluctuation relations. Some are practical, some are fundamental. But they're not mathematically only theoretical constructs that have been proved to work.

Randomness and probability are central to modern physics. In statistical mechanics this is because we don’t know everything about the distribution of atoms and molecules in a fluid, so we consider a probability distribution over what they might be; in quantum mechanics it’s because the theory only lets us predict measurement outcomes probabilistically. Physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern explains how we’ve been lagging behind at bringing these two theories together, and how recent progress is changing the landscape of how we think about the microworld.

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Nicole Yunger Halpern received her Ph.D. in physics from Caltech. She is currently a NIST physicist and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Physics and IPST at the University of Maryland. Her Ph.D. thesis won the international Ilya Prigogine Prize for a thermodynamics dissertation. As a postdoc she received the International Quantum Technology Emerging Researcher Award. Her new book is Quantum Steampunk: The Physics of Yesterday’s Tomorrow.

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