Related papers: Ten reasons why a thermalized system cannot be des…
To understand under which conditions thermodynamics emerges from the microscopic dynamics is the ultimate goal of statistical mechanics. Despite the fact that the theory is more than 100 years old, we are still discussing its foundations…
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 show how statistical thermodynamics can be formulated in situations in which thermodynamics applies, while equilibrium statistical mechanics does not. A typical case is, in the words of Landau and Lifshitz, that of partial (or…
The investigation of thermalization in isolated quantum many-body systems has a long history, dating back to the time of developing statistical mechanics. Most quantum many-body systems in nature are considered to thermalize, while some…
A new statistical approach is presented to study the thermal instability process of optically thin unmagnetized plasma. In this approach the time evolution of mass distribution function over temperature is calculated. This function…
Experiments with trapped atomic gases have opened novel possibilities for studying the evolution of nonequilibrium finite quantum systems, which revived the necessity of reconsidering and developing the theory of such processes. This review…
The most complicated phenomena of equilibrium statistics, phase separations and transitions of various order and critical phenomena, can clearly and sharply be seen even for small systems in the topology of the curvature of the…
Thermal behavior in subsystems of closed quantum systems is commonly attributed to dynamical chaos, quantum ergodicity, canonical typicality, or the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, suggesting a fundamentally statistical origin of…
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…
We study the emergence over time of a universal, uniform distribution of quantum states supported on a finite subsystem, induced by projectively measuring the rest of the system. Dubbed deep thermalization, this phenomenon represents a form…
Superstatistics is a framework in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics that successfully describes a wide variety of complex systems, including hydrodynamic turbulence, weakly-collisional plasmas, cosmic rays, power grid fluctuations, among…
The thermal properties of ice, liquid water and steam are at odds with statistical theories applied to many-body systems. Here, these properties are quantitatively explained with a bulk-scale matter field emerging from the indefinite status…
To describe the nonequilibrium states of a system we introduce a new thermodynamic parameter - the lifetime of a system. The statistical distributions which can be obtained out of the mesoscopic description characterizing the behaviour of a…
Time evolution operator in quantum mechanics can be changed into a statistical operator by a Wick rotation. This strict relation between statistical mechanics and quantum evolution can reveal deep results when the thermodynamic limit is…
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…
An exact stochastic model for the thermalisation of quantum states is proposed. The model has various physically appealing properties. The dynamics are characterised by an underlying Schrodinger evolution, together with a nonlinear term…
Gibbs and Boltzmann definitions of temperature agree only in the macroscopic limit. The ambiguity in identifying the equilibrium temperature of a finite sized `small' system exchanging energy with a bath is usually understood as a…
We attempt to characterize irreversibility of a dynamical system from the existence of different forward and backward mathematical representations depending on the direction of the time arrow. Such different representations have been…
Highlights: \begin{itemize} \item Relativistic effect of crystal dynamics "freezing". \item Non-statistical model of thermodynamic equilibration. \end{itemize} The dynamics of oscillations of a one-dimensional atomic chain is investigated…
Conventional thermo-statistics address infinite homogeneous systems within the canonical ensemble. However, some 150 years ago the original motivation of thermodynamics was the description of steam engines, i.e. boiling water. Its essential…