Second-order asymptotic expansion and thermodynamic interpretation of a fast–slow Hamiltonian system

Abstract

This article includes a short survey of selected averaging and dimension reduction techniques for deterministic fast–slow systems. This survey includes, among others, classical techniques, such as the WKB approximation or the averaging method, as well as modern techniques, such as the GENERIC formalism. The main part of this article combines ideas of some of these techniques and addresses the problem of deriving a reduced system for the slow degrees of freedom (DOF) of a fast–slow Hamiltonian system. In the first part, we derive an asymptotic expansion of the averaged evolution of the fast–slow system up to second order, using weak convergence techniques and two-scale convergence. In the second part, we determine quantities which can be interpreted as temperature and entropy of the system and expand these quantities up to second order, using results from the first part. The results give new insights into the thermodynamic interpretation of the fast–slow system at different scales.