Vortrag
What is... the arrow of time?
Vortrag von Dr. Chiara Saffirio
Datum: 22.05.18 Zeit: 17.15 - 18.30 Raum:
The arrow of time is a pictorial expression to indicate the irreversibility of some physical phenomena we experience in everyday life
(people get older but not younger, things spontaneously heat up but never cool down, disorder never decreases).
This seems to contradict the fundamental laws of classical physics based on symmetry between past and future.
L. Boltzmann was the first one who tried to explain the coexistence of these two descriptions in the equation which bears his name,
thus initiating the field of Kinetic Theories as a sub-branch of Statistical Mechanics.
In recent years, many efforts have been done to give a rigorous mathematical base to the Boltzmann equation, with some notable results,
as the Fields Medals given to P.L. Lions (1994) and C. Villani (2010) witness.
This talk aims to present the mathematical justification of the emergence of the Boltzmann equation and give an overview
on the current state of research and open problems.