Fyzikální ústav Akademie věd ČR

We studied entropy production in noneqilibrium processes and demonstrated that the Prigogine minimum-entropy production corresponds in a sense to the maximum-entropy principle from the Einstein fluctuation theory.

Formation of patterns with alternating stripes of bulk-immiscible adsorbates on metal surfaces was studied. We found from extensive numerical simulations that to match experimental findings, two mechanisms must be simultaneously present: strain relaxation by alternating arrangemets and kinetic segregation due to diffusion barriers.

We introduced the concept of thermodynamic homogeneity to mean-field models of spin glasses. With its aid and real-replicas we derived a hierachical construction of the averaged free energy equivalent to the Parisi discrete replica-symmetry breaking solution. Further on, we demonstrated with this formalism that the thermodynamic theory of Thouless, Anderson, and Palmer is incomplete in the spin-glass phase and the Parisi order parameters cannot be consistently derived from it. An adequate extension of the TAP theory in the low-temperature phase was proposed.