Logarithmic oscillators: ideal Hamiltonian thermostats
Statistical Mechanics
2012-07-11 v4
Abstract
A logarithmic oscillator (in short, log-oscillator) behaves like an ideal thermostat because of its infinite heat capacity: when it weakly couples to another system, time averages of the system observables agree with ensemble averages from a Gibbs distribution with a temperature T that is given by the strength of the logarithmic potential. The resulting equations of motion are Hamiltonian and may be implemented not only in a computer but also with real-world experiments, e.g., with cold atoms.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1203.5968,
title = {Logarithmic oscillators: ideal Hamiltonian thermostats},
author = {Michele Campisi and Fei Zhan and Peter Talkner and Peter Hänggi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1203.5968},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures. v4: version accepted in Phys. Rev. Lett