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Suppose we wait a sufficient time before making the velocity
in-version. The postcollisional correlations wmdd have
an arbitrary range, and the entropy price for velocity inversion
would become too high. The velocity inversion would then
require too high an entropy price and thus would be excluded.
In physical terms this means that the second law excludes persistent
long-range precollisional correlations.
The analogy with the macroscopic description of the second
law is striking. From the point of view of energy conservation
(see Chapters IV and V), heat and work play the same role,
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----·-------+ t
t 0 2t 0
Figure 46. Time variation of the .J l -function in the vlocity inversion experiment:
at time t0, the velocities are inversed and J-l presents a discontinuity.
At time 2t0 the system is in the same state as at ti_me 0, and .J l
recovers the value it had initially. At all times (except at t0), J-l is decreasing.
The important fact is that at time t0 the J-l-quantity takes two different values
(see text).
but no longer from the point of view of the second law. Briefly
speaking, work is a more coherent form of energy and always
can be converted into heat, but the inverse is not true. There is
on the microscopic level a similar distinction between collisions
and correlations. From the point of view of dynamics, collisions
and correlations play equivalent roles. Collisions give
rise to correlations, and correlations may destroy the effect of
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