Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics: An Introduction with Applications

Nonequilibrium statistical mechanics (NESM), practically synonymous with time-dependent statistical mechanics (TDSM), is a beautiful and profound subject, vast in scope, diverse in applications, and indispensable in understanding the changing natural phenomena we encounter in the physical, chemical and biological world.Although time dependent phenomena have been studied from antiquity, the modern subject, the nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, has its genesis in Boltzmann’s 1872 classic paper that aimed at extending Maxwell’s kinetic theory of gases by including intermolecular interactions.Subsequent development of the subject drew upon the seminal work of Einstein and Langevin on Brownian motion, Rayleigh and Stokes on hydrodynamics, and on the works of Onsager, Prigogine, Kramers, Kubo, Mori, and Zwanzig. One major goal of this book is to develop and present NESM in an organized fashion so that students can appreciate and understand the flow of the subject from postulates to pract