Related papers: When you can't count, sample! Computable entropies…
From thermodynamic origins, the concept of entropy has expanded to a range of statistical measures of uncertainty, which may still be thermodynamically significant. However, laboratory measurements of entropy continue to rely on direct…
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…
Stochastic thermodynamics extends classical thermodynamics to small systems in contact with one or more heat baths. It can account for the effects of thermal fluctuations and describe systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. A basic…
It is known that the equilibrium properties of open classical systems that are strongly coupled to a heat bath are described by a set of thermodynamic potentials related to the system's Hamiltonian of mean force. By adapting this framework…
We investigate the overdamped stochastic dynamics of a particle in an asymptotically flat external potential field, in contact with a thermal bath. For an infinite system size, the particles may escape the force field and diffuse freely at…
We develop a method using a coarse graining of the energy fluctuations of an equilibrium quantum system which produces simple parameterizations for the behaviour of the system. As an application, we use these methods to gain more…
Lecture notes on elements of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics: (1) a characterization of the nonequilibrium condition, largely by contrast to equilibrium; (2) a retelling of some of the great performances of the more distant past,…
We search for steady states in a class of fluctuating and driven physical systems that exhibit sustained currents. We find that the physical concept of a steady state, well known for systems at equilibrium, must be generalised to describe…
These lecture notes give a short review of methods such as the matrix ansatz, the additivity principle or the macroscopic fluctuation theory, developed recently in the theory of non-equilibrium phenomena. They show how these methods allow…
Although coarse-grained models have been widely used to explain exotic phenomena in complex fluids, such as droplet formation in living cells, these conventional approaches often fail to capture the intricate microscopic degrees of freedom…
Experimental and theoretical results about entropy limits for macroscopic and single-particle systems are reviewed. It is clarified when it is possible to speak about a quantum of entropy, given by the Boltzmann constant k, and about a…
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…
We review some recent developments which make use of the concept of `superstatistics', an effective description for nonequilibrium systems with a varying intensive parameter such as the inverse temperature. We describe how the asymptotic…
We construct and explore a family of states for quantum systems in contact with two or more heath reservoirs. The reservoirs are described by equilibrium distributions. The interaction of each reservoir with the bulk of the system is…
There is a well-known analogy between statistical and quantum mechanics. In statistical mechanics, Boltzmann realized that the probability for a system in thermal equilibrium to occupy a given state is proportional to exp(-E/kT) where E is…
Computing equilibrium states in condensed-matter many-body systems, such as solvated proteins, is a long-standing challenge. Lacking methods for generating statistically independent equilibrium samples in "one shot", vast computational…
Maximum-entropy ensembles are key primitives in statistical mechanics from which thermodynamic properties can be derived. Over the decades, several approaches have been put forward in order to justify from minimal assumptions the use of…
We study the properties of nonequilibrium systems modelled as spin models without defined Hamiltonian as the majority voter model. This model has transition probabilities that do not satisfy the condition of detailed balance. The lack of…
In this paper an alternative approach to statistical mechanics based on the maximum information entropy principle (MaxEnt) is examined, specifically its close relation with the Gibbs method of ensembles. It is shown that the MaxEnt…
Statistical physics aims to describe properties of macroscale systems in terms of distributions of their microscale agents. Its central tool is the maximization of entropy, a variational principle. We review the history of this principle,…