First Law of Thermodynamics Breakthrough Upends Equilibrium Theory in Physics

> The zeroth law of thermodynamics defines thermal equilibrium and forms a basis for the definition of temperature: If two systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third system, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.

> The first law of thermodynamics states that, when energy passes into or out of a system (as work, heat, or matter), the system's internal energy changes in accordance with the law of conservation of energy.

> The second law of thermodynamics states that in a natural thermodynamic process, the sum of the entropies of the interacting thermodynamic systems never decreases. A common corollary of the statement is that heat does not spontaneously pass from a colder body to a warmer body.

> The third law of thermodynamics states that a system's entropy approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches absolute zero. With the exception of non-crystalline solids (glasses), the entropy of a system at absolute zero is typically close to zero. [2]

First law of thermodynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics

Quantum thermodynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_thermodynamics

Thermal quantum field theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_quantum_field_theory :

> In theoretical physics, thermal quantum field theory (thermal field theory for short) or finite temperature field theory is a set of methods to calculate expectation values of physical observables of a quantum field theory at finite temperature.

From the article:

> [170 years ago] the technology of the time dictated the gases or fluids that people would have studied are in equilibrium at the densities and temperatures that they were using back then.”

"Quantifying Energy Conversion in Higher-Order Phase Space Density Moments in Plasmas" (2023) https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.085201