In the late 19th and early 20th centuries famous scientists like Boltzmann, Loschmidt, Maxwell and Einstein tried, unsuccessfully, to find the link between the time-reversible equations of motion of individual molecules and irreversible thermodynamics. The solution to this puzzle was found in 1993, and the link is now known as the Fluctuation Theorem (FT). In the decade that followed theory and computer simulation tested the FT and, in 2002, an experiment indirectly demonstrated the FT.¶ This thesis describes original experiments that demonstrate the FT directly using Optical Tweezers. A related expression, known as the Kawasaki Identity, is also experimentally demonstrated. These experimental results provide a rigorous demonstration that irreversible dynamics can be obtained from a system with time-reversible dynamics.

This dissertation details our experiments on studying the Brownian motion of an optically trapped microsphere with ultrahigh resolution, and cooling of its motion towards the quantum ground state. We have trapped glass microspheres in water, air and vacuum with optical tweezers. We developed a detection system that can monitor the position of a trapped microsphere with Angstrom spatial resolution and microsecond temporal resolution. We studied the Brownian motion of a trapped microsphere in air over a wide range of pressures. We measured the instantaneous velocity of a Brownian particle. Our results provide direct verification of the Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution and the energy equipartition theorem for a Brownian particle. For short time scales, the ballistic regime of Brownian motion is observed, in contrast to the usual diffusive regime. We are currently developing a new detection system to measure the instantaneous velocity of a Brownian particle in water. In vacuum, we have used active feedback to cool the three center-of-mass vibration modes of a trapped microsphere from room temperature to millikelvin temperatures with a minimum mode temperature of 1.5 mK, which corresponds to the reduction of the root mean square (rms) amplitude of the microsphere from 6.7 nm to 15 pm for that mode. The mean thermal occupation number of that mode is reduced from about 6.8$\times 10^8$ at 297 K to about 3400 at 1.5 mK. / text

In the development of digital communication and information theory, every channel decoding rule has resulted in a revolution at the time when it was invented. In the area of information theory, early channel coding theorems were established mainly by maximum likelihood decoding, while the arrival of typical sequence decoding signaled the era of multi-user information theory, in which achievability proof became simple and intuitive. Practical channel code design, on the other hand, was based on minimum distance decoding at the early stage. The invention of belief propagation decoding with soft input and soft output, leading to the birth of turbo codes and low-density-parity check (LDPC) codes which are indispensable coding techniques in current communication systems, changed the whole research area so dramatically that people started to use the term "modern coding theory'' to refer to the research based on this decoding rule. In this thesis, we propose a new decoding rule, dubbed jar decoding, which would be expected to bring some new thoughts to both the code performance analysis and the code design. Given any channel with input alphabet X and output alphabet Y, jar decoding rule can be simply expressed as follows: upon receiving the channel output y^n ∈ Y^n, the decoder first forms a set (called a jar) of sequences x^n ∈ X^n considered to be close to y^n and pick any codeword (if any) inside this jar as the decoding output. The way how the decoder forms the jar is defined independently with the actual channel code and even the channel statistics in certain cases. Under this jar decoding, various coding theorems are proved in this thesis. First of all, focusing on the word error probability, jar decoding is shown to be near optimal by the achievabilities proved via jar decoding and the converses proved via a proof technique, dubbed the outer mirror image of jar, which is also quite related to jar decoding. Then a Taylor-type expansion of optimal channel coding rate with finite block length is discovered by combining those achievability and converse theorems, and it is demonstrated that jar decoding is optimal up to the second order in this Taylor-type expansion. Flexibility of jar decoding is then illustrated by proving LDPC coding theorems via jar decoding, where the bit error probability is concerned. And finally, we consider a coding scenario, called interactive encoding and decoding, and show that jar decoding can be also used to prove coding theorems and guide the code design in the scenario of two-way communication.

We try to explain the mathematical theory of thin liquid film evolution. We start with introducing physical processes in which thin film evolution plays an important role. Derivation of the classical thin film equation and existing mathematical theory in the literature are also introduced. To explain the thin film evolution we derive a new family of degenerate parabolic equations. We prove results on existence, uniqueness, long time behavior, regularity and support properties of solutions for this equation. At the end of the thesis we consider the classical thin film Cauchy problem on the whole real line for which we use asymptotic equipartition to show H^1(R) convergence of solutions to the unique self-similar solution.

In the development of digital communication and information theory, every channel decoding rule has resulted in a revolution at the time when it was invented. In the area of information theory, early channel coding theorems were established mainly by maximum likelihood decoding, while the arrival of typical sequence decoding signaled the era of multi-user information theory, in which achievability proof became simple and intuitive. Practical channel code design, on the other hand, was based on minimum distance decoding at the early stage. The invention of belief propagation decoding with soft input and soft output, leading to the birth of turbo codes and low-density-parity check (LDPC) codes which are indispensable coding techniques in current communication systems, changed the whole research area so dramatically that people started to use the term "modern coding theory'' to refer to the research based on this decoding rule. In this thesis, we propose a new decoding rule, dubbed jar decoding, which would be expected to bring some new thoughts to both the code performance analysis and the code design. Given any channel with input alphabet X and output alphabet Y, jar decoding rule can be simply expressed as follows: upon receiving the channel output y^n ∈ Y^n, the decoder first forms a set (called a jar) of sequences x^n ∈ X^n considered to be close to y^n and pick any codeword (if any) inside this jar as the decoding output. The way how the decoder forms the jar is defined independently with the actual channel code and even the channel statistics in certain cases. Under this jar decoding, various coding theorems are proved in this thesis. First of all, focusing on the word error probability, jar decoding is shown to be near optimal by the achievabilities proved via jar decoding and the converses proved via a proof technique, dubbed the outer mirror image of jar, which is also quite related to jar decoding. Then a Taylor-type expansion of optimal channel coding rate with finite block length is discovered by combining those achievability and converse theorems, and it is demonstrated that jar decoding is optimal up to the second order in this Taylor-type expansion. Flexibility of jar decoding is then illustrated by proving LDPC coding theorems via jar decoding, where the bit error probability is concerned. And finally, we consider a coding scenario, called interactive encoding and decoding, and show that jar decoding can be also used to prove coding theorems and guide the code design in the scenario of two-way communication.

Nous étudions la dépendance spatio-temporelle de l'énergie de la coda courte-période (> 1Hz) des seismes. Pour celà, nous développons des solutions de l'équation de Transfert Radiatif (TR) pour les ondes élastiques dans des milieux réalistes. Deux approches sont adoptées, l'une numérique basée sur les méthodes de Monte-Carlo, l'autre analytique basée sur l'équation de diffusion. Dans l'approximation acoustique, nous résolvons l'équation de TR pour la croûte terrestre représentée par un guide d'ondes hétérogène. Pour ce modèle, l'énergie de la coda décroît exponentiellement en raison des fuites d'énergie à la base de la croûte. Nous confrontons cette théorie de façon critique à des données du Mexique. Nous concluons que notre modèle avec fuite rend parfaitement compte des observations et nous montrons que l'anélasticité des roches est faible. Enfin nous introduisons le temps de résidence des ondes diffuses pour décrire la décroissance énergétique de la coda. Nous abordons ensuite le problème de diffusion multiple en élasticité complète. Nous tenons compte des conversions entre ondes P et S, ainsi que de leur polarisation, décrite par 5 paramètres de Stokes. Nous montrons que l'énergie de la coda est rapidement dominée par les ondes S. Un équilibre d'énergie universel s'établit rapidement entre les modes P et S, en accord avec le principe d'équipartition . Le phénomène d'équilibrage de l'énergie est également observé pour les ondes de coda du Mexique, démontrant leur caractère diffusif. Enfin, nous calculons le cône de rétro-diffusion cohérente dynamique en champ proche. Nous montrons qu'après un régime transitoire, le cône se stabilise et s'étend sur une longueur d'onde autour de la source. L'ensemble des modèles et observations nous permettent de confirmer la nature diffusive de la coda.

Η παρούσα εργασία αφορά στη μελέτη Χαμιλτώνιων συστημάτων Ν μη γραμμικών ταλαντωτών, όπως είναι αυτό των Fermi Pasta και Ulam (FPU), με στόχο την βαθύτερη κατανόηση της δυναμικής των σχεδόν-περιοδικών τροχιών και του ρόλου των αντίστοιχων τόρων στο χώρο φάσεων, καθώς αυξάνουμε την ενέργεια Ε και τον αριθμό βαθμών ελευθερίας Ν του συστήματος. Το βασικό μας αποτέλεσμα είναι ότι υπάρχουν τόροι χαμηλής διάστασης, που προκύπτουν από τη συνέχεια των αντίστοιχων του γραμμικού συστήματος, οι οποίοι ευθύνονται για τις FPU επαναλήψεις και εμποδίζουν την ισοκατανομή της ενέργειας μεταξύ όλων των κανονικών τρόπων ταλάντωσης. Αναλύοντας ευστάθεια αυτών των τόρων, μπορέσαμε να δώσουμε μια πληρέστερη ερμηνεία στο Παράδοξο των FPU, συνδέοντας και συμπληρώνοντας έτσι δύο από τις επικρατέστερες ερμηνείες του εν λόγω φαινομένου. / The present work concerns the study of Hamiltonian systems of N nonlinear coupled oscillators, as it is the one by Fermi Pasta and Ulam (FPU), in order to understand the dynamics of quasi-periodic orbits and the role of their corresponding tori in phase space, as we increase the energy E and the number N of the degrees of freedom. Our fundamental result is that there exist tori of low dimension, that come from the continuation of the corresponding tori of the linear system, which are responsible for the FPU recurrences and prevent the system from equipartition of the energy among all normal modes. By investigating the stability of these tori, we achieved to provide a more complete explanation for the FPU paradox, connecting and supplementing in this way two of the most dominant approaches for this paradox.

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