An open question in the field of non-equilibrium statistical physics is whether there exists a unique way through which non-equilibrium systems equilibrate irrespective of how far they are away from equilibrium. To answer this question we have genera
ted non-equilibrium states of various types of systems by molecular dynamics simulation technique. We have used a statistical method called system identification technique to understand the dynamical process of equilibration in reduced dimensional space. In this paper, we have tried to establish that the process of equilibration is unique.
We present a study of the equilibration process of nonequilibrium systems by means of molecular dynamics simulation technique. The nonequilibrium conditions are achieved in systems by defining velocity components of the constituent atoms randomly. Th
e calculated Shannon en- tropy from the probability distribution of the kinetic energy among the atoms at different instants during the process of equilibration shows oscillation as the system relaxes towards equilibrium. Fourier transformations of these oscillating Shannon entropies reveal the existance of Debye frequency of the concerned system. From these studies it was concluded that the signature of the equilibration process of dynamical systems is the time invariance of Shannon entropy.
