Related papers: Microcanonical phase transitions in small systems
Traditionally, phase transitions are defined in the thermodynamic limit only. We discuss how phase transitions of first order (with phase separation and surface tension), continuous transitions and (multi)-critical points can be seen and…
Small thermodynamic systems exhibit peculiar behavior different from that observed in long-scale systems. Non-equilibrium processes taking place in those systems are strongly influenced by the presence of fluctuations which can be large.…
Legendre transform between thermodynamic quantities such as the Helmholtz free energy and entropy plays a key role in the formulation of the canonical ensemble. In the standard treatment, the transform exchanges the independent variable…
The notion of negative absolute temperature emerges naturally from Boltzmann's definition of "surface" microcanonical entropy in isolated systems with a bounded energy density. Recently, the well-posedness of such construct has been…
The problem of the existence of a Strong Stochasticity Threshold in the FPU-beta model is reconsidered, using suitable microcanonical observables of thermodynamic nature, like the temperature and the specific heat. Explicit expressions for…
We study the time evolution of eleven microscopic entropy definitions (of Boltzmann-surface, Gibbs-volume, canonical, coarse-grained-observational, entanglement and diagonal type) and three microscopic temperature definitions (based on…
For models which exhibit a continuous phase transition in the thermodynamic limit a numerical study of small systems reveals a non-monotonic behaviour of the microcanonical specific heat as a function of the system size. This is in contrast…
The two-body potential of systems with long-range interactions decays at large distances as $V(r)\sim 1/r^\alpha$, with $\alpha\leq d$, where $d$ is the space dimension. Examples are: gravitational systems, two-dimensional hydrodynamics,…
The pattern of isentropes in the vicinity of a first-order phase transition is proposed as a key for a sub-classification. While the confinement--deconfinement transition, conjectured to set in beyond a critical end point in the QCD phase…
We consider a Hamiltonian system made of $N$ classical particles moving in two dimensions, coupled via an {\it infinite-range interaction} gauged by a parameter $A$. This system shows a low energy phase with most of the particles trapped in…
Thermodynamics makes definite predictions about the thermal behavior of macroscopic systems in and out of equilibrium. Statistical mechanics aims to derive this behavior from the dynamics and statistics of the atoms and molecules making up…
Two recently proposed expressions for the computation of the entropy in the microcanonical ensemble are compared, and their equivalence is proved. These expressions are valid for a certain class of statistical mechanics systems, that can be…
The proper definition of entropy is fundamental to the relationship between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. It also plays a major role in the recent debate about the validity of the concept of negative temperature. In this paper,…
We investigate the statistical equilibrium properties of a system of classical particles interacting via Newtonian gravity, enclosed in a three-dimensional spherical volume. Within a mean-field approximation, we derive an equation for the…
Boltzmann's entropy is slightly modified to make it suitable for discussing phase transitions in finite systems. As an example it is shown that the pendulum undergoes a second order phase transition when passing from a vibrational to a…
A new microcanonical equilibrium state is introduced for quantum systems with finite-dimensional state spaces. Equilibrium is characterised by a uniform distribution on a level surface of the expectation value of the Hamiltonian. The…
Carnot's four-part ideal-gas cycle includes both isothermal and adiabatic expansions and compressions. Analyzing this cycle provides the fundamental basis for statistical thermodynamics. We explore the cycle here from a pedagogical view in…
If Bekenstein's conjectured bound on the microcanonical entropy, S < 2 pi E R, is applied to a closed subsystem of maximal linear size R and excitation energy up through E, it can be violated by an arbitrarily large factor by a scalar field…
Comparison of the thermodynamic entropy with Boltzmann's principle shows that under conditions of constant volume the total number of arrangements in simple thermodynamic systems with temperature-independent heat capacities is TC/k. A…
Dynamics of many-particle systems with long-range interaction is collisionless and governed by the Vlasov equation. This dynamics is a flow of a six-dimensional incompressible liquid with uncountable integrals of motion. If the flow…