Negating Negative Heat Capacity in Nanoclusters
Materials Science
2007-05-23 v1 Statistical Mechanics
Abstract
It is shown that negative heat capacity in nanoclusters is an artifact of applying equilibrium thermodynamic formalism on a small system trapped out of equilibrium in a particular structural motif representing only part of the energetically available phase space volume. Trapping may occur in either the canonical or microcanonical ensemble, but it is unavoidable in the microcanonical. A more general consequence of trapping is that all macroscopic quantities determined for nanoclusters will depend on the initial conditions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0701357,
title = {Negating Negative Heat Capacity in Nanoclusters},
author = {Karo Michaelian and Ivan Santamaria-Holek},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0701357},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
11 pages, 3 figures