Related papers: Some positive thoughts about Negative Absolute Tem…
Temperature plays a crucial role in metastable phenomena, not only by contributing to determine the state (phase) of a system, but also ruling the decay probability to more stable states. Such a situation is encountered in many different…
When long-range interactions are present the usual definition of temperature implies that two systems in thermal equilibrium can be at different temperatures. This local temperature has physical significance, if the sub-systems cease to…
The problem of electron decoherence at low temperature is analyzed from the perspective of recent experiments on decoherence rate measurement and on related localization phenomena in low-dimensional systems. Importance of decoherence at…
Whoever has to learn or to teach thermodynamics is confronted with conceptual difficulties which are specific to this field of physics ([1],[2]). It seems that they can be eliminated by inserting relativity in the thermodynamic theory. The…
Thermodynamics (in concert with its sister discipline, statistical physics) can be regarded as a data reduction scheme based on partitioning a total system into a subsystem and a bath that weakly interact with each other. The ubiquity and…
In traditional thermodynamics, temperature is a local quantity: a subsystem of a large thermal system is in a thermal state at the same temperature as the original system. For strongly interacting systems, however, the locality of…
Phase transitions at a finite (i.e. non-zero) temperature are typically dominated by classical correlations, in contrast to zero temperature transitions where quantum mechanics plays an essential role. Therefore, it is natural to ask if…
Dynamical properties of a generic null surface are known to have a thermodynamic interpretation. Such an interpretation is completely based on an analogy between the usual law of thermodynamics and structure of gravitational field equation…
We discuss a class of mechanical models of thermometers and their minimal requirements to determine the temperature for systems out of the common scope of thermometry. In particular we consider: 1) anharmonic chains with long time of…
It is a common view in philosophy of physics that thermodynamics is a non-fundamental theory. This is motivated in particular by the fact that thermodynamics is considered to be a paradigmatic example for a theory that can be reduced to…
A possible definition of the specific heat of open quantum systems is based on the reduced partition function of the system. For a free damped quantum particle, it has been found that under certain conditions, this specific heat can become…
Given the full shift over a countable state space on a countable amenable group, we develop its thermodynamic formalism. First, we introduce the concept of pressure and, using tiling techniques, prove its existence and further properties…
Recent progress in the synthesis and processing of nano-structured materials and systems calls for an improved understanding of thermal properties on small length scales. In this context, the question whether thermodynamics and, in…
We have known for more than thirty years that black holes behave as thermodynamic systems, radiating as black bodies with characteristic temperatures and entropies. This behavior is not only interesting in its own right; it could also,…
We investigate nonequilibrium steady states in a class of one-dimensional diffusive systems that can attain negative absolute temperatures. The cases of a paramagnetic spin system, a Hamiltonian rotator chain and a one-dimensional discrete…
We show that thermalization of the motion of atoms at negative temperature is possible in an optical lattice, for conditions that are feasible in current experiments. We present a method for reversibly inverting the temperature of a trapped…
According to a well-known principle of thermodynamics, the transfer of heat between two bodies is reversible when their temperatures are infinitesimally close. As we demonstrate, a little-known alternative exists: two bodies with…
We develop a finite temperature field theory formalism in any dimension that has the filling fractions as the basic dynamical variables. The formalism efficiently decouples zero temperature dynamics from the quantum statistical sums. The…
In traditional thermodynamical and statistical-mechanical approaches one has (some) detailed knowledge of the principles governing the microdynamics of a system. However in many instances we may not have a Hamiltonian or good information…
Expressing physics problems in the form of a mathematical model is one of the most important stages in the problem-solving process. Particularly in algebraic symbolization, understanding the meanings of signs and being able to manipulate…