The Marian Smoluchowski Symposium on Statistical Physics is a cyclic scientific meeting organized annually in Poland since 1988. The conference takes name after the famous Polish physicist who made huge contributions in the natural science and foundation of statistical physics. Links to the most important scientific works by Marian Smoluchowski are available here.

The conference is traditionally organized under the patronage of the Polish Academy of Art and Science, Mark Kac Center for Complex System Research at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and the consortium of four other Polish academic institutions, i.e. the Institute of Chemical Physics, Polish Academy of Science (Warszawa), Silesian University of Technology (Gliwice), August Chełkowski Institue of Physics, Silesian University (Katowice) and Wrocław University of Technology. European Science Foundation was involved in preparation and co-sponsoring of the symposium in the past within the program PESC/STOCHDYN.

In 2012 the conference is organized and promoted with the assistance of the Division of Statistical and Nonlinear Physics (SNP), a part of the European Physical Society (EPS). The main mission of SNP is to facilitate contacts between scientists through the organization of meetings, conferences and workshops. It supports also and co-ordinates all research activities in nonlinear and statistical physics. Additionally, it seeks to promote the public understanding and appreciation of statistical and nonlinear physics. The division offers expertise and advice to other bodies of EPS, as well as to other European institutions in the field of statistical and nonlinear physics.

The program of the anniversary conference in 2012 is devoted to Fluctuation Relations in Nonequilibrium Regime and will cover, among others

• Fluctuation relations for entropy production in nonequilibrium stationary states
• Fluctuation relations and large deviation theory
• Decoherence, chaos and quantum-classical correspondence
• Diffusive processes and weak ergodicity breaking
• Stochastic thermodynamics
• Fluctuation-dissipation relation in fluids, granular media, nano- and biological-systems

An early attempt to relate the amplitude of the dissipation to that of the fluctuations was put forward in Einsteins and Smoluchowskis works on Brownian motion. In 1930 Onsager enunciated his regression hypothesis stating that the relaxation of a macroscopic nonequilibrium disturbances is governed by the same laws which rule the dynamics of spontaneous microscopic fluctuations in equilibrium systems. The Onsager hypothesis is the basis of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem as investigated by Callen and Welton and by Kubo in the theory of time dependent correlation functions. A central fundamental result of the theory allows to predict the average response to external perturbations and to obtain the transport coefficients from correlation functions calculated at equilibrium states.

Although originally the fluctuation-dissipation theory was formulated and applied to Hamiltonian systems near thermodynamic equilibrium (linear regime), in the last twenty years it has been realized that some generalization of the existing theory to so called fluctuation theorem and nonequilibrium work relation are possible and hold for a vast class of systems both close and far from equilibrium. The so called fluctuation relation has been introduced in 1993 by Evans, Cohen and Morriss who considered the fluctuations of the entropy production rate in a shearing fluid. Continuation of similar developments by Gallavotti and Cohen, Crooks, Jarzynski, Derrida and coworkers have produced a new theoretical framework which incorporates the previous linear response theory and at the same instant, goes beyond the linear regime to deal with far from equilibrium phenomena, such as turbulence and the dynamics of granular materials. The new relationships are also fundamental for understanding thermodynamics of small nanoscale systems which are naturally affected by fluctuations. Implications of fluctuation relations and the recent advancements in this field will be the main object of presentations and discussions during the anniversary Smoluchowski Symposium.

Our aim is to gather prominent contributors to the topic who will ensure that frontiers of the modern nonequilibrium statistical physics will be adequately presented during the Symposium. We foresee participation of up to 5 plenary speakers who will be asked to give overview one-hour talks. A mixture of invited speakers and regular participants from many European countries, in particular those taking parts in the ESF Program Exploring Physics of Small Devices, will provide grounds for an exchange of ideas, discussions, and strengthening the existing intraEuropean collaborations and possibly initiating new ones. Following the tradition of former Symposia, which have always attracted a good amount of young participants, we would like to invite not only recognized investigators but also very good speakers who could further stimulate research in the field and give an impulse to addressing new tasks.