Statistical physics and fluctuations in ballistic non-equilibrium systems

In nonequilibrium systems in the ballistic transport regime, every point of the system contains particles arriving from different regions-each of them at different temperatures-and there are only few collisions, in such a way that equilibrium between the different populations will be reached very slowly. Here, we tentatively approach the local distribution function by a superposition of local-equilibrium distribution functions with different temperatures, corresponding to the different starting positions of the particles. In a second-order expansion, we find a distribution function which depends not only on the Hamiltonian H but also on H², and we study the additional contribution to energy fluctuations.