Abstract
Galton boards are models of deterministic diffusion in a uniform external field, akin to driven periodic Lorentz gases, here considered in the absence of dissipation mechanism. Assuming a cylindrical geometry with axis along the direction of the external field, the two-dimensional board becomes a model for one-dimensional mass transport along the direction of the external field. This is a purely diffusive process which admits fractal nonequilibrium stationary states under flux boundary conditions. Analytical results are obtained for the statistics of multibaker maps modeling such a nonuniform diffusion process. A correspondence is established between the local phase-space statistics and their macroscopic counterparts. The fractality of the invariant state is shown to be responsible for the positiveness of the entropy production rate.
3 More- Received 20 March 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.80.021127
©2009 American Physical Society