  This paper discusses the thermodynamic irreversibility realized in
high-dimensional Hamiltonian systems with a time-dependent parameter. A new
quantity, the irreversible information loss, is defined from the Lyapunov
analysis so as to characterize the thermodynamic irreversibility. It is proved
that this new quantity satisfies an inequality associated with the second law
of thermodynamics. Based on the assumption that these systems possess the
mixing property and certain large deviation properties in the thermodynamic
limit, it is argued reasonably that the most probable value of the irreversible
information loss is equal to the change of the Boltzmann entropy in statistical
mechanics, and that it is always a non-negative value. The consistency of our
argument is confirmed by numerical experiments with the aid of the definition
of a quantity we refer to as the excess information loss.
