English

Non-analytic microscopic phase transitions and temperature oscillations in the microcanonical ensemble: An exactly solvable 1d-model for evaporation

Statistical Mechanics 2007-05-23 v3

Abstract

We calculate exactly both the microcanonical and canonical thermodynamic functions (TDFs) for a one-dimensional model system with piecewise constant Lennard-Jones type pair interactions. In the case of an isolated NN-particle system, the microcanonical TDFs exhibit (N-1) singular (non-analytic) microscopic phase transitions of the formal order N/2, separating N energetically different evaporation (dissociation) states. In a suitably designed evaporation experiment, these types of phase transitions should manifest themselves in the form of pressure and temperature oscillations, indicating cooling by evaporation. In the presence of a heat bath (thermostat), such oscillations are absent, but the canonical heat capacity shows a characteristic peak, indicating the temperature-induced dissociation of the one-dimensional chain. The distribution of complex zeros (DOZ) of the canonical partition may be used to identify different degrees of dissociation in the canonical ensemble.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0511500,
  title  = {Non-analytic microscopic phase transitions and temperature oscillations in the microcanonical ensemble: An exactly solvable 1d-model for evaporation},
  author = {Stefan Hilbert and Jörn Dunkel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0511500},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

version accepted for publication in PRE, minor additions in the text, references added