A Newtonian approach to the study of irreversibility in many-body systems

Abstract: Irreversibility remains one of the least understood concepts in physics. One of the main reasons is the fact that the fundamental laws of classical and quantum physics are time symmetric, whereas macroscopic processes evolve in a preferred time direction. This long-standing conflict of ideas goes to the heart of the so-called Loschmidt's paradox. Here, we address this dichotomy from a Newtonian perspective of the dynamics of the center of mass of a many-body system, which was found to impose constraints on the time evolution. We demonstrate that despite the time symmetric behavior of the microscopic constituents of the system, in many typical cases the external conditions lead naturally to the unidirectional macroscopic time evolution, independent of the internal interactions and how far the system is from equilibrium. We also illustrate our findings by direct calculation of the center of mass dynamics for a nonequilibrium steady state system partially free from external influence and for a system following the route to equilibrium.