内容简介

A small army of physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and engineers has joined forces to attack a classic problem, the "reversibility paradox", with modern tools. This book describes their work from the perspective of computer simulation, emphasizing the author''s approach to the problem of understanding the compatibility, and even inevitability, of the irreversible second law of thermodynamics with an underlying time-reversible mechanics. Computer simulation has made it possible to probe reversibility from a variety of directions and "chaos theory" or "nonlinear dynamics" has supplied a useful vocabulary and set of concepts, which allow a fuller explanation of irreversibility than that available to Boltzmann or to Green and Kubo and Onsager. Clear illustration of concepts is emphasized throughout, and reinforced with a glossary of technical terms from the specialized fields which have been combined here to focus on a common theme.
The book begins with a discussion contrasting the idealized reversibility of basic physics and the pragmatic irreversibility of real life. Computer models, and simulation, are next discussed and illustrated. Simulations provide the means to assimilate concepts through worked-out examples. State-of-the-art analyses, from the point of view of dynamical systems, are applied to many-body examples from nonequilibrium molecular dynamics and to chaotic irreversible flows from finite-difference, finite-element, and particle-based continuum simulations. Two necessary concepts from dynamical-systems theory ?fractals and Lyapunov instability ?are fundamental to the approach.
Undergraduate-level physics, calculus, and ordinary differential equations are sufficient background for a full appreciation of this book, which is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduates, and research workers. The generous assortment of examples worked out in the text will stimulate readers to explore the rich and fruitful field of study which links fundamental reversible laws of physics to the irreversibility surrounding us all.
作者简介：William Graham Hoover was born in Boston on 18 April 1936.He completed his graduate education in 1961,with MSChem and PhD degrees form the University of Michigan.After a year working with Jacques Poirier,at Duke University ,he became a staff physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,a weapons laboratory in California.He has held a joint appointment at the University of California''s Davis Campus for the past 25 years,teaching a variety of graduate courese in the Department of Applied Science.Professor Hoover took an early retirement in 1994 in order to concentrate on research and the preparation of this book,He has authored more than 200 research publications,mostly in statistical physics,He and his wife Carol,a former student,experiment with birds,cannon,flowers,and trees at thier ranch homes near the henry coe State Park,The photograph shows the Hoovers at Red Skunk Ranch During the summer of 1999,preparing equipment for their upcoming millennium celebration.