Detailed balance

The principle of detailed balance is formulated for kinetic systems which are decomposed into elementary processes (collisions, or steps, or elementary reactions): At equilibrium, each elementary process should be equilibrated by its reverse process.

The principle of detailed balance was explicitly introduced for collisions by Ludwig Boltzmann. In 1872, he proved his H-theorem using this principle. The arguments in favor of this property are founded upon microscopic reversibility.

Five years before Boltzmann, James Clerk Maxwell used the principle of detailed balance for gas kinetics with the reference to the principle of sufficient reason. He compared the idea of detailed balance with other types of balancing (like cyclic balance) and found that "Now it is impossible to assign a reason" why detailed balance should be rejected (pg. 64).

Albert Einstein in 1916 used the principle of detailed balance in a background for his quantum theory of emission and absorption of radiation.

In 1901, Rudolf Wegscheider introduced the principle of detailed balance for chemical kinetics. In particular, he demonstrated that the irreversible cycles ${\ce {A1->A2->\cdots ->A_{\mathit {n}}->A1}}$ ${\ce {A1->A2->\cdots ->A_{\mathit {n}}->A1}}$ are impossible and found explicitly the relations between kinetic constants that follow from the principle of detailed balance. In 1931, Lars Onsager used these relations in his works, for which he was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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