Related papers: Einstein's Approach to Statistical Mechanics: The …
Some thoughts are presented on the inter-relation between beauty and truth in science in general and theoretical physics in particular. Some conjectural procedures that can be used to create new ideas, concepts and results are illustrated…
We formulate the problem of approach to equilibrium in algebraic quantum statistical mechanics and study some of its structural aspects, focusing on the relation between the zeroth law of thermodynamics (approach to equilibrium) and the…
The Brownian motion of a hot nanoparticle is described by an effective Markov theory based on fluctuating hydrodynamics. Its predictions are scrutinized over a wide temperature range using large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of a hot…
We comment on the paper [1] by Albert Einstein from 1918 to Willem De Sitter's solution [2] of the Einstein field equation from today's point of view. To this end, we start by describing the geometry of the De Sitter space-time and present…
This paper is a short exposition of Stein's method of normal approximation from my personal perspective. It focuses mainly on the characterization of the normal distribution and the construction of Stein identities. Through examples, it…
On November 23, 2021, the Einstein-Besso manuscript on the perihelion motion of Mercury will be auctioned at Christie's. Expected to fetch around $3M, it promises to be the most expensive scientific manuscript ever sold at auction. In this…
This article offers a critical engagement with J\"urgen Renn's historiographical approach, with particular focus on "The Evolution of Knowledge" and "The Einsteinian Revolution" (co-authored with Hanoch Gutfreund). It explores how Renn…
The dynamics of one and two identical spheres rolling in a nearly-levitating upflow of air obey the Langevin Equation and the Fluctuation-Dissipation Relation [Ojha et al. Nature 427, 521 (2004) and Phys. Rev. E 71, 01631 (2005)]. To probe…
The content of Einstein's theory of gravitation is encoded in the properties of the solutions to his field equations. There has been obtained a wealth of information about these solutions in the ninety years the theory has been around. It…
A framework for relativistic thermodynamics and statistical physics is built by first exploiting the symmetries between energy and momentum in the derivation of the Boltzmann distribution, then using Einstein's energy-momentum relationship…
The pathways along which A. Einstein and D. Hilbert independently came to the gravitational field equations are traced. Some of the papers that assert a point of view on the history of the derivation of the gravitational field equations…
Einstein's kinetic theory of the Brownian motion, based upon light water molecules continuously bombarding a heavy pollen, provided an explanation of diffusion from the Newtonian mechanics. Since the discovery of quantum mechanics it has…
This paper is a review on the statistical mechanics of anharmonic oscillators coupled to heat reservoirs. We discuss stationary states (existence and ergodic properties) and entropy production (positivity, Green-Kubo formulas and the…
I will argue, pace a great many of my contemporaries, that there's something right about Boltzmann's attempt to ground the second law of thermodynamics in a suitably amended deterministic time-reversal invariant classical dynamics, and that…
Introducing the Boltzmann distribution very early in a statistical thermodynamics course (in the spirit of Feynmann) has many didactic advantages, in particular that of easily deriving the Gibbs entropy formula. In this note, a short…
In 1917 Einstein initiated modern cosmology by postulating, based on general relativity, a homogeneous, static, spatially curved universe. To counteract gravitational contraction he introduced the cosmological constant. In 1922 Alexander…
An attempt is made to clarify the difference between a theorem derived by Evans and Searles in 1994 on the statistics of trajectories in phase space and a theorem proved by the authors in 1995 on the statistics of fluctuations on phase…
After a rapid introduction to the physical motivations and a succinct presentation of heuristic results, this survey summarises the main mathematical results known on the Edwards-Anderson and the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick models of spin…
A stochastic dynamics has a natural decomposition into a drift capturing mean rate of change and a martingale increment capturing randomness. They are two statistically uncorrelated, but not necessarily independent mechanisms contributing…
At the core of equilibrium statistical mechanics lies the notion of statistical ensembles: a collection of microstates, each occurring with a given a priori probability that depends only on a few macroscopic parameters such as temperature,…