Author(s)

Angel Ricardo Plastino^1,2, Gustvo Luis Ferri³, Mario Carlos Rocca^2,4,5, Angelo Plastino^2,4,6

¹CeBio y Departamento de Ciencias Básicas, Universidad Nacional del Noroeste de la Prov. de Buenos Aires, Junin, Argentina.
²Argentina’s National Research Council (CONICET), La Plata, Argentina.
³Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de La Pampa, Junin, Argentina.
⁴Departamento de Física, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina.
⁵Departamento de Matemática, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina.
⁶SThAR - EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland.

We consider a typical master equation describing thermal time-evolution. In parallel, we also consider a quasi static canonical description of the same problem. We are able to devise a way of numerically comparing these two treatments and concoct a distance-measure between them. In this way, one is in a position to know how far or close equilibrium and off-equilibrium can get. The first, rather surprising observation, is that our systems lose structural details as N grows. Also, the time-evolution of the distance between the two pertinent probability distributions is quite sensitive to the heating-cooling process.

Information Theory, Master Equation, Thermal Time-Evolution, Equilibrium-Off Equilibrium Distances

Plastino, A. , Ferri, G. , Rocca, M. and Plastino, A. (2020) Information-Based Numerical Distances between Equilibrium and Non-Equilibrium States. Journal of Modern Physics, 11, 1031-1043. doi: 10.4236/jmp.2020.117065.