Related papers: The Gibbs Paradox and the Distinguishability of Id…
Gibbs paradox in the context of statistical mechanics addresses the issue of additivity of entropy of mixing gases. The usual discussion attributes the paradoxical situation to classical distinguishability of identical particles and credits…
The Gibbs paradox has frequently been interpreted as a sign that particles of the same kind are fundamentally indistinguishable; and that quantum mechanics, with its identical fermions and bosons, is indispensable for making sense of this.…
The suggestion that particles of the same kind may be indistinguishable in a fundamental sense, even so that challenges to traditional notions of individuality and identity may arise, has first come up in the context of classical…
The issue of the thermodynamics of a system of distinguishable particles is discussed in this paper. In constructing the statistical mechanics of distinguishable particles from the definition of Boltzmann entropy, it is found that the…
The Gibbs Paradox is essentially a set of open questions as to how sameness of gases or fluids (or masses, more generally) are to be treated in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. They have a variety of answers, some restricted to…
The ``Gibbs Paradox'' refers to several related questions concerning entropy in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics: whether it is an extensive quantity or not, how it changes when identical particles are mixed, and the proper way to…
The classical Gibbs paradox concerns the entropy change upon mixing two gases. Whether an observer assigns an entropy increase to the process depends on their ability to distinguish the gases. A resolution is that an "ignorant" observer,…
This is a systematic review of the concept of indistinguishability in both classical and quantum mechanics, with particular attention to Gibbs' paradox. Section 1 is on the Gibbs paradox; section 2 is a defense of the concept of classical…
Defining the entropy of classical particles raises a number of paradoxes and ambiguities, some of which have been known for over a century. Several, such as Gibbs' paradox, involve the fact that classical particles are distinguishable, and…
If, in a system of identical particles, the one particle state is defined by the partial trace to one of the component spaces of the total Hilbert space, then all one particle states are identical. The particles are indistinguishable. This…
We introduce into classical mechanics the concept of non-discerned particles for particles that are identical, non-interacting and prepared in the same way. The non-discerned particles correspond to an action and a density which satisfy the…
It is shown that quantum systems of identical particles can be treated as if they were different when they are in well differentiated states. This simplifying assumption allows the consideration of quantum systems isolated from the rest of…
Indistinguishability of particles is normally considered to be an inherently quantum property which cannot be possessed by a classical theory. However, Saunders has argued that this is incorrect, and that classically indistinguishable…
Colloidal particles are distinguishable. Moreover, their thermodynamic properties are extensive. Statistical Mechanics predicts such behaviour if one accepts that the configurational integral of a system of N colloids must be divided by N!.…
According to classical physics particles are basic building blocks of the world. Classical particles are distinguishable objects, individuated by physical characteristics. By contrast, in quantum mechanics the standard view is that…
The statistical mechanics of particles that populate indistinguishable energy sub-states is explored. In particular, the mathematical treatment of the microstates differs from conventional statistical mechanics where for a given degeneracy,…
In statistical mechanics Gibbs' paradox is avoided if the particles of a gas are assumed to be indistinguishable. The resulting entropy then agrees with the empirically tested thermodynamic entropy up to a term proportional to the logarithm…
The issue of the Gibbs paradox is that when considering mixing of two gases within classical thermodynamics, the entropy of mixing appears to be a discontinuous function of the difference between the gases: it is finite for whatever small…
Distinguishability plays a major role in quantum and statistical physics. When particles are identical their wave function must be either symmetric or antisymmetric under permutations and the number of microscopic states, which determines…
This letter presents a new, solely thermodynamical argument for considering the states of the quantum isolated horizon of a black hole as distinguishable. We claim that only if the states are distinguishable, the thermodynamic entropy is an…