Volume 37, Issue 2

Abstract. This article presents an exact and enhanced solution of the study in the previous paper [Can. J. Phys., 88 (2010), 501–511]. For this purpose, I use the traveling wave solution method instead of the small parameter method, which enables us to have the full exact solution without any cut-off from the value of variables. In addition, I use the accurate formula of the electron–electron collision frequency. I persist in avoiding the discontinuity in the solution caused by the Laplace transformation results, which is included in the previous study. In the present work, the kinetic and the irreversible thermodynamic properties of the charged gas are presented from the molecular viewpoint. Our study is based on the solution of the BGK (Bhatnager–Gross–Krook) model of the Boltzmann kinetic equation, with the precision value of the electron–electron collision frequency. The BGK model equation coupled with Maxwell's equations for electrons near a moving rigid plane are solved. The distinction and comparisons between the perturbed and the equilibrium velocity distribution functions are illustrated. The ratios between the different contributions of the internal energy changes are predicted via the extended Gibbs equation for both diamagnetic and paramagnetic plasmas. The results are applied to a typical model of laboratory argon plasma.

Abstract. Classically, the Prigogine–Defay (PD) ratio involves differences in isobaric heat capacity, isothermal compressibility, and isobaric thermal expansion coefficient between a super-cooled liquid and the corresponding glass at the glass transition. However, determining such differences by extrapolation of coefficients that have been measured for super-cooled liquid and glassy state, respectively, poses the problem that it does not exactly take into account the non-equilibrium character of the glass transition. In this paper, we assess this question by taking into account the time dependence of configurational contributions to the three thermodynamic coefficients in the glass transition range upon varying temperature and/or pressure. Macroscopic non-equilibrium thermodynamics is applied to obtain a generalised form of the PD ratio. The classical PD ratio can then be taken as a particular case of this generalisation. Under some assumptions, the configurational PD ratio (CPD ratio) can be expressed in terms of fictive temperature and fictive pressure which, hence, provides another possibility to experimentally verify this formalism.

Abstract. In this paper we calculate the entropy production of a relativistic binary mixture of inert dilute gases using kinetic theory. For this purpose we use the covariant form of Boltzmann's equation which, when suitably transformed, yields a formal expression for such quantity. Its physical meaning is extracted when the distribution function is expanded in the gradients using the well-known Chapman–Enskog method. Retaining the terms to first order, consistently with linear irreversible thermodynamics we show that, indeed, the entropy production can be expressed as a bilinear form of products between the fluxes and their corresponding forces. The implications of this result are thoroughly discussed.