Related papers: Statistical Equilibrium Dynamics
A general formulation of stochastic thermodynamics is presented for open systems exchanging energy and particles with multiple reservoirs. By introducing a partition in terms of "macrostates" (e.g. sets of "microstates"), the consequence on…
The physical significance of the stochastic processes associated to the generalized Gibbs ensembles is scrutinized here with special attention to the thermodynamic fluctuations of small systems. The contact with the environment produces an…
There is a common view in thermodynamics that the behavior of a macroscopic system can be described by only a few state variables. Although this is true for many cases, it is unclear whether it is meaningful to ask how many state variables…
The fundamental assumption of statistical mechanics is that the system is equally likely in any of the accessible microstates. Based on this assumption, the Boltzmann distribution is derived and the full theory of statistical thermodynamics…
It is argued that a typical many body energy eigenstate has a well defined thermodynamic entropy and that individual eigenstates possess thermodynamic characteristics analogous to those of generic isolated systems. We examine large systems…
Do negative absolute temperatures matter physics and specifically Statistical Physics? We provide evidence that we can certainly answer positively to this vexata quaestio. The great majority of models investigated by statistical mechanics…
We develop a general formalism to determine the statistical equilibrium states of self-gravitating systems in general relativity and complete previous works on the subject. Our results are valid for an arbitrary form of entropy but, for…
The circumstances under which a system reaches thermal equilibrium, and how to derive this from basic dynamical laws, has been a major question from the very beginning of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Despite considerable…
We study a distribution of thermal states given by random Hamiltonians with a local structure. We show that the ensemble of thermal states monotonically approaches the unitarily invariant ensemble with decreasing temperature if all…
It is widely believed that the underlying reality behind statistical mechanics is a deterministic and unitary time evolution of a many-particle wave function, even though this is in conflict with the irreversible, stochastic nature of…
The nonequilibrium thermodynamics of an open (classical or quantum) system in strong contact with a single heat bath can be conveniently described in terms of the Hamiltonian of mean force. However, the conventional formulation is limited…
Thermodynamic relations are derived from first principles of mechanics for non-equilibrium processes. Since the key role herein is played by the law of increase of entropy, the latter is analyzed at first. It is shown that its derivation…
The present paper studies a large class of temperature dependent probability distributions and shows that entropy and energy can be defined in such a way that these probability distributions are the equilibrium states of a generalized…
Statistical properties of coupled dynamic-stochastic systems are studied within a combination of the maximum information principle and the superstatistical approach. The conditions at which the Shannon entropy functional leads to a…
We investigate the relation between various statistical ensembles of finite systems. If ensembles differ at the level of fluctuations of the order parameter, we show that the equations of states can present major differences. A sufficient…
Statistical thermodynamics is valuable as a conceptual structure that shapes our thinking about equilibrium thermodynamic states. A cloud of unresolved questions surrounding the foundations of the theory could lead an impartial observer to…
The foundations of statistical mechanics, namely how equilibrium hypothesis emerges microscopically from quantum theory, is explored through investigating the environment-induced quantum decoherence processes. Based on the recent results on…
We assume that markovian dynamics on a finite graph enjoys a gauge symmetry under local scalings of the probability density, derive the transformation law for the transition rates and interpret the thermodynamic force as a gauge potential.…
Superstatistics is an elegant framework for the description of steady-state thermodynamics, mostly used for systems with long-range interactions such as plasmas. In this work, we show that the potential energy distribution of a classical…
Traditionally, it is understood that fluctuations in the equilibrium distribution are not evident in thermodynamic systems of large $N$ (the number of particles in the system) \cite{Huang1}. In this paper we examine the validity of this…