Relaxation and resonances in fluctuating dielectric systems

In this paper we show how the ideas behind extended irreversible thermodynamics are used to generate a systematic treatment of the relaxation and resonance phenomena in the propagation and absorption of electromagnetic energy in dielectric materials in a nonequilibrium state. Two cases are discussed: the first, in which the forced oscillations arising from the correlation between the fluctuations of the polarization vector and the electric field are neglected, and the second, in which this term is taken into account. In both cases we show how the main equations serve to make a connection between the macroscopic approach followed here and a number of results obtained for both, gases and polar liquids using molecular models. The results obtained here are compared with previous work on this problem, and new effects arising from the second case are pointed out.