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Does von Neumann Entropy Correspond to Thermodynamic Entropy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Eugene Y. S. Chua
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Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that the von Neumann entropy corresponds to thermodynamic entropy, but Meir Hemmo and Orly Shenker have recently argued against this view by attacking von Neumann’s argument. I argue that Hemmo and Shenker’s arguments fail because of several misunderstandings about statistical-mechanical and thermodynamic domains of applicability, about the nature of mixed states, and about the role of approximations in physics. As a result, their arguments fail in all cases: in the single-particle case, the finite-particles case, and the infinite-particles case.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 88 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 145 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Craig Callender, Eddy Keming Chen, Erik Curiel, Tim Maudlin, John Norton, Sai Ying Ng, Adrian K. Yee, and participants at the 2019 summer school The Nature of Entropy I for their feedback, discussion, and comments—they have contributed to this article in one way or another. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for pushing me to improve on various aspects of this article.

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