Contact topology and non-equilibrium thermodynamics

Abstract: We describe a method, based on "hard" contact topology, of showing the existence of semi-infinite trajectories of contact Hamiltonian flows which start on one Legendrian submanifold and asymptotically converge to another Legendrian submanifold. We discuss a mathematical model of non-equilibrium thermodynamics where such trajectories play a role of relaxation processes, and illustrate our results in the case of the Glauber dynamics for the mean field Ising model.