Equilibrium and nonequilibrium Lyapunov spectra for dense fluids and solids

Harald A. Posch, William G. Hoover
1989 Physical review. A, General physics  
The Lyapunov exponents describe the time-averaged rates of expansion and contraction of a La grangian hypersphere made up of comoving phase-space points. The principal axes of such a hyper sphere grow, or shrink, exponentially fast with time. The corresponding set of phase-space growth and decay rates is called the "Lyapunov spectrum." Lyapunov spectra are determined here for a variety of two-and three-dimensional fluids and solids, both at equilibrium and in nonequilibrium steady states. The
more » ... nequilibrium states are all boundary-driven shear flows, in which a single boundary degree of freedom is maintained at a constant temperature, using a Nose-Hoover ther mostat. Even far-from-equilibrium Lyapunov spectra deviate logarithmically from equilibrium ones. Our nonequilibrium spectra, corresponding to planar-Couette-flow Reynolds numbers rang ing from 13 to 84, resemble some recent approximate model calculations based on Navier-Stokes hydrodynamics. We calculate the Kaplan-Yorke fractal dimensionality for the nonequilibrium phase-space flows associated with our strange attractors. The far-from-equilibrium dimensionality may exceed the number of additional phase-space dimensions required to describe the time depen dence of the shear-flow boundary.
doi:10.1103/physreva.39.2175 pmid:9901474 fatcat:tmtofn4tbvhm3osjst4z5j5yzy