The theory of phenomenological Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics is extended by includimg stochastic processes in order to account for recently derived thermodynamical relations such as the Jarzynski equality. Four phenomenological axioms are postulated resulting in a phenomenological interpretation of Jarzynski's equality. Especially, considering the class of Jarzynski processes Jarzynski's equality follows from the axiom that the statistical average of the exponential work is protocol independent.
Categories: nlin.CD cond-mat.stat-mech