Understanding L&L's argument, constant current in a crystal

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the interpretation of a statement from chapter III of volume 8 of the Landau and Lifshitz series regarding the Joule effect and entropy increase in crystals. Participants are examining the implications of a constant current term in the context of the entropy production equation.

Discussion Character

  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant questions the logic presented by Landau and Lifshitz regarding the impossibility of a constant current vector ##\vec J^{(0)}## existing without violating the condition that entropy must increase.
  • Another participant notes that the first term in the entropy production equation is quadratic in the electric field ##\vec E##, while the second term involving ##\vec J^{(0)}## is linear, suggesting that for small values of ##\vec E##, the sign of the second term could dominate.
  • A follow-up comment reiterates the point about the dominance of the linear term for small electric fields and questions the implications of having a positive second term.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing interpretations of the argument made by Landau and Lifshitz, indicating that there is no consensus on the validity of the reasoning regarding the constant current term and its impact on entropy production.

Contextual Notes

The discussion highlights the complexity of the relationship between the terms in the entropy production equation and the conditions under which they can be considered positive or negative. There are unresolved assumptions regarding the behavior of the terms as the electric field varies.

fluidistic
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I'm trying to go through chapter III of the vol.8 of Landau and Lifshitz series. (Fortunately the book is uploaded to the archive.org, I guess it is in the public domain.)
At page 87 ( << Archive.org link deleted by the Mentors because of copyright violation >> ), they speak about the Joule effect and that this effect makes the entropy increase. Namely ##dS/dt = \int (\vec J \cdot \vec E )/T dV## and that this quantity must be positive. Where ##\vec J## is the current density vector, and it's worth ##j_i = \sigma_{ik}E_k##. So far so good.

Then they make a remark that I do not quite understand/buy. They say that the symmetry of the crystal would allow ##j_i = \sigma_{ik}E_k + j_i^{(0)}## where ##\vec J^{(0)}## is a constant vector. But that in reality this term cannot exist, because entropy must increase, and since the term ##\vec J^{(0)}\cdot \vec E## in the integrand could take either sign, ##dS/dt## would not be invariably positive.

I do not quite understand the above logic. I do understand that we must have ##dS/dt>0##. Therefore we must have ##\underbrace{\int (\sigma \vec E) \cdot \vec E / T dV}_{>0. \text{not sure I can assume that now...}} + \int \vec J^{(0)} \cdot \vec E / T dV >0##. Thus the second integral could even be negative, yet the sum of the two integrals be positive and we would have no problem whatsoever. If that second term is positive or zero, no problem either. The problem arises when the second integral is lesser than minus the first integral. I do not see how L&L can fix it to zero with the logical argument they give.

Does someone understand L&L's argument here? If so, how would you explain it better to me?

Thank you!
 
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The first term is quadratic in E, while the second term is linear. So for sufficiently small E, the sign would be dominate by that of the second term.
 
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DrDu said:
The first term is quadratic in E, while the second term is linear. So for sufficiently small E, the sign would be dominate by that of the second term.
Very good point. But then what would be the problem of having a positive second term?
 
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