English

System-size scaling of Boltzmann and alternate Gibbs entropies

Statistical Mechanics 2014-06-12 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Chemical Physics

Abstract

It has recurrently been proposed that the Boltzmann textbook definition of entropy S(E)=klnΩ(E)S(E)=k\ln \Omega (E) in terms of the number of microstates Ω(E)\Omega (E) with energy EE should be replaced by the expression SG(E)=klnE<EΩ(E)S_G(E)=k\ln \sum_{E^\prime <E}{\Omega (E^\prime )} examined by Gibbs. Here, we show that SGS_G either is equivalent to SS in the macroscopic limit or becomes independent of the energy exponentially fast as the system size increases. The resulting exponential scaling makes the realistic use of SGS_G unfeasible and leads in general to temperatures that are inconsistent with the notions of hot and cold.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1404.2760,
  title  = {System-size scaling of Boltzmann and alternate Gibbs entropies},
  author = {Jose M. G. Vilar and J. Miguel Rubi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1404.2760},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

7 pages, 3 figures