Related papers: Statistical ensembles without typicality
Typicality arguments replace the postulated mixed state ensembles of statistical mechanics with pure states sampled uniformly at random, explaining why most microstates of large systems exhibit thermal behavior. This paradigm has been…
Using statistical thermodynamics, we derive a general expression of the stationary probability distribution for thermodynamic systems driven out of equilibrium by several thermodynamic forces. The local equilibrium is defined by imposing…
We outline a phenomenological theory of evolution and origin of life by combining the formalism of classical thermodynamics with a statistical description of learning. The maximum entropy principle constrained by the requirement for…
We show here how to use pieces of thermodynamics' first law to generate probability distributions for generalized ensembles when only level-population changes are involved. Such microstate occupation modifications, if properly constrained…
Entropy is a central concept in physics, but can be challenging to calculate even for systems that are easily simulated. This is exacerbated out of equilibrium, where generally little is known about the distribution characterizing simulated…
A major challenge for community ecology is using spatio-temporal data to infer parameters of dynamical models without conducting laborious experiments. We present a novel framework from statistical physics -- Maximum Caliber -- to…
Nonequilibrium complex systems are often effectively described by the mixture of different dynamics on different time scales. Superstatistics, which is "statistics of statistics" with two largely separated time scales, offers a consistent…
Statistical mechanics is a powerful framework for analyzing optimization yielding analytical results for matching, optimal transport, and other combinatorial problems. However, these methods typically target the zero-temperature limit,…
The maximum entropy principle from statistical mechanics states that a closed system attains an equilibrium distribution that maximizes its entropy. We first show that for graphs with fixed number of edges one can define a stochastic edge…
Thermodynamics is commonly presented as a theory of macroscopic systems in stable equilibrium, built upon assumptions of extensivity and scaling with system size. In this paper, we present a universal formulation of the elementary…
The intricate relations between elements in natural and human-made systems sustain the complex processes that shape our world, forming multiscale networks of interactions. These networks can be represented as graphs composed of nodes…
Entropy is the distinguishing and most important concept of our efforts to understand and regularize our observations of a very large class of natural phenomena, and yet, it is one of the most contentious concepts of physics. In this…
A classical particle system coupled with a thermostat driven by an external constant force reaches its steady state when the ensemble-averaged drift velocity does not vary with time. The statistical mechanics of such a system is derived…
Interpreting partial information collected from systems subject to noise is a key problem across scientific disciplines. Theoretical frameworks often focus on the dynamics of variables that result from coarse-graining the internal states of…
The framework of non-extensive statistical mechanics, proposed by Tsallis, has been used to describe a variety of systems. The non-extensive statistical mechanics is usually introduced in a formal way, using the maximization of entropy. In…
This paper addresses fundamental aspects of statistical mechanics such as the motivation of a classical state space with spontaneous transitions, the meaning of non-equilibrium in the context of thermalization, and the justification of…
Maximum entropy modeling is a flexible and popular framework for formulating statistical models given partial knowledge. In this paper, rather than the traditional method of optimizing over the continuous density directly, we learn a smooth…
Polydisperse systems are commonly encountered when dealing with soft matter in general or any non simple fluid. Yet their treatment within the framework of statistical thermodynamics is a delicate task as the latter has been essentially…
Entropy in thermodynamics is an extensive quantity, whereas standard methods in statistical mechanics give rise to a non-extensive expression for the entropy. This discrepancy is often seen as a sign that basic formulas of statistical…
Recent advances in quantum simulators allow direct experimental access to ensembles of pure states generated by measuring part of an isolated quantum many-body system. These projected ensembles encode fine-grained information beyond thermal…