Related papers: A statistical method for measuring the Galactic po…
Preserving biodiversity and ecosystem stability is a challenge that can be pursued through modern statistical mechanics modeling. Here we introduce a variational maximum entropy-based algorithm to evaluate the entropy in a minimal ecosystem…
To evaluate a potential usually one analyzes trajectories of test particles. For the Galactic Center case astronomers use bright stars or photons, so there are two basic observational techniques to investigate a gravitational potential,…
Verlinde's heuristic argument for the interpretation of the standard Newtonian gravitational force as an entropic force is generalized by the introduction of a minimum temperature (or maximum wave length) for the microscopic degrees of…
Stellar streams result from the tidal disruption of satellites and star clusters as they orbit a host galaxy, and can be very sensitive probes of the gravitational potential of the host system. We select and study narrow stellar streams…
One of the major goals of the field of Milky Way dynamics is to recover the gravitational potential field. Mapping the potential would allow us to determine the spatial distribution of matter - both baryonic and dark - throughout the…
A method to search for tidal streams and to fit their orbits based on maximum likelihood is presented and applied to the Gaia data. Tests of the method are performed showing how a simulated stream produced by tidal stripping of a star…
For a colloidal particle driven by a constant force across a periodic potential, we investigate the distribution of entropy production both experimentally and theoretically. For short trajectories, the fluctuation theorem holds…
There are two main approaches to non-equlibrium statistical mechanics: one using stochastic processes and the other using dynamical systems. To model the dynamics during inflation one usually adopts a stochastic description, which is known…
Generating samples from limited information is a fundamental problem across scientific domains. Classical maximum entropy methods provide principled uncertainty quantification from moment constraints but require sampling via MCMC or…
The entropy of an electronic system offers important insights into the nature of its quantum mechanical ground state. This is particularly valuable in cases where the state is difficult to identify by conventional experimental probes, such…
Recent years have seen the discovery of many tidal streams through the Galaxy. Relatively straightforward observations of a stream allow one to deduce three phase-space coordinates of an orbit. An algorithm is presented that reconstructs…
We explore the use of the method of Maximum Entropy (ME) as a technique to generate approximations. In a first use of the ME method the "exact" canonical probability distribution of a fluid is approximated by that of a fluid of hard…
Thermodynamics have been applied to astronomy, biology, psychology, some social systems and so on. But, various evolutions from astronomy to biology and social systems cannot be only increase of entropy. When fluctuations are magnified due…
In beyond-Horndeski theories of gravity, the Vainshtein screening mechanism might only be partially effective inside stellar objects. This results in a modification of the pressure balance equation inside stars, often characterized by a…
Stellar streams are excellent probes of the gravitational potential in which they evolve. In the Milky Way (MW), globular cluster (GC) streams are routinely used to infer properties about time-dependent perturbations of the underlying…
We present a new method for constraining the Milky Way halo gravitational potential by simultaneously fitting multiple tidal streams. This method requires full three-dimensional positions and velocities for all stars to be fit, but does not…
Dynamically cold stellar streams from tidally dissolved globular clusters (GCs) serve as excellent tools to measure the Galactic mass distribution and show promise to probe the nature of dark matter. For successful application of these…
Problems of probabilistic inference and decision making under uncertainty commonly involve continuous random variables. Often these are discretized to a few points, to simplify assessments and computations. An alternative approximation is…
We give a variational formulation of classical statistical mechanics where the one-body density and the local entropy distribution constitute the trial fields. Using Levy's constrained search method it is shown that the grand potential is a…
We introduce a broadly applicable statistical procedure for testing which parametric distribution family generated a random sample of data. The method, termed the Difference in Differential Entropy (DDE) test, provides a unified framework…