Viscosity, Reversibility, Statistical Ensembles: in a Navier-Stokes fluid

by Giovanni Gallavotti (Sapienza Università di Roma)

Monday 17 Feb 2020, 14:00 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dipartimento di Fisica - Ed. G.Marconi)

Is it possible that a viscous fluid could be described via reversible equations? A positive answer is proposed in analogy with the ensembles equivalence in mechanics; the role of the container volume is played by a regularization parameter N, the temperature by the viscosity and the energy by the fluid enstrophy. The thermodynamic limit will correspond to the removal of the regularization (N infinito). An interpretation of viscosity emerges which maintains the equation reversible while retaining the physical consequences of irreversibility interpreted as a spontaneous symmetry breakdown.