Irreversibility of heat transport and optical non-coherence: an experimental demonstration of the analogy

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Meilakhs, Aleksandr, Pastorino, Claudio, Larotonda, Miguel
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Meilakhs, Aleksandr
Pastorino, Claudio
Larotonda, Miguel
author_facet Meilakhs, Aleksandr
Pastorino, Claudio
Larotonda, Miguel
contents The arrow of time problem remains one of the most intriguing questions of modern physics. We investigate one particular example of this problem: the irreversibility of heat transfer through an interface between two materials. This special case turned out to be much simpler than that of transport phenomena in bulk materials. We start by exploring a mechanism that turns equations of reversible, unitary transmission of wave-particles through the interface into irreversible equations, describing the distribution functions at the interface. This mechanism, non-coherence, is treated in an analogy with wave optics: no real waves are absolutely monochromatic and thus have finite temporal coherence. We find an experimental setup to prove the suggested mechanism and calculate the optimal parameters to observe the phenomenon. We conduct an experiment whose results fully agree with the predictions of our theory. In the final discussion, we revisit the connection with heat transport through a material interface and show that only the suggested mechanism can explain the irreversibility of interfacial transport.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_09522
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Irreversibility of heat transport and optical non-coherence: an experimental demonstration of the analogy
Meilakhs, Aleksandr
Pastorino, Claudio
Larotonda, Miguel
Other Condensed Matter
Optics
The arrow of time problem remains one of the most intriguing questions of modern physics. We investigate one particular example of this problem: the irreversibility of heat transfer through an interface between two materials. This special case turned out to be much simpler than that of transport phenomena in bulk materials. We start by exploring a mechanism that turns equations of reversible, unitary transmission of wave-particles through the interface into irreversible equations, describing the distribution functions at the interface. This mechanism, non-coherence, is treated in an analogy with wave optics: no real waves are absolutely monochromatic and thus have finite temporal coherence. We find an experimental setup to prove the suggested mechanism and calculate the optimal parameters to observe the phenomenon. We conduct an experiment whose results fully agree with the predictions of our theory. In the final discussion, we revisit the connection with heat transport through a material interface and show that only the suggested mechanism can explain the irreversibility of interfacial transport.
title Irreversibility of heat transport and optical non-coherence: an experimental demonstration of the analogy
topic Other Condensed Matter
Optics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09522