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Accepted · first revision · record

Title: Existence of a thermodynamics for macroscopic driven steady states
Plain: Equilibrium thermodynamics predicts what happens when systems are put in contact or split into phases using a few numbers such as temperature and chemical potential. Whether driven macroscopic systems have a similar small set of numbers with the same predictive power is unknown.
Precise: For driven lattice gases and boundary-driven diffusive systems described by macroscopic fluctuation theory, determine whether intensive variables and a free-energy-like function, defined from isolated steady states (as in Sasa-Tasaki steady-state thermodynamics), predict beyond linear response the outcome of macroscopic operations: contact between systems, phase coexistence, and response to slow changes of parameters. Answer: yes with the construction and its domain, or a no-go result with counterexamples.
Settled by: A proof that such a construction predicts contact and coexistence for a stated class of driven models, or explicit models in which no single-system variables can do so.
Kind: well-posed
Answer type: yes-no
References: (empty)
Literature status: contested
Status note: (empty)
Posed since: 2006