Related papers: What should a statistical mechanics satisfy to ref…
Statistical physics provides a useful perspective for the analysis of many complex systems; it allows us to relate microscopic fluctuations to macroscopic observations. Developmental biology, but also cell biology more generally, are…
Statistical mechanics is one of the most powerful and elegant tools in the quantitative sciences. One key virtue of statistical mechanics is that it is designed to examine large systems with many interacting degrees of freedom, providing a…
We consider nonequilibrium systems with complex dynamics in stationary states with large fluctuations of intensive quantities (e.g. the temperature, chemical potential, or energy dissipation) on long time scales. Depending on the…
Consistent statistical physical description is given for systems where the elementary excitations are composite objects. Explicit calculational scheme is constructed for the energy density and the total number of thermodynamical degrees of…
Gibbs measures are the main object of study in equilibrium statistical mechanics, and are used in many other contexts, including dynamical systems and ergodic theory, and spatial statistics. However, in a large number of natural instances…
We address a simple connection between results of Hamiltonian nonlinear dynamical theory and thermostatistics. Using a properly defined dynamical temperature in low-dimensional symplectic maps, we display and characterize long-standing…
Many complex systems satisfy a set of constraints on their degrees of freedom, and at the same time, they are able to work and adapt to different conditions. Here, we describe the emergence of this ability in a simplified model in which the…
We develop a general formulation of quantum statistical mechanics in terms of probability currents that satisfy continuity equations in the multi-particle position space, for closed and open systems with a fixed number of particles. The…
As the quantification of metabolism, nonequilibrium steady states play a central role in living matter, but are beyond the purview of equilibrium statistical mechanics. Here we develop a fermionic theory of nonequilibrium steady states in…
Thermodynamics and its quantum counterpart are traditionally described with statistical ensembles. Canonical typicality has related statistical mechanics for a system to ensembles of global energy eigen- states of system and its environment…
I give a highly selective overview of the way statistical mechanics explains the microscopic origins of the time asymmetric evolution of macroscopic systems towards equilibrium and of first order phase transitions in equilibrium. These…
As the title says we want to answer the question; how and why does statistical mechanics work? As we know from the most used prescription of Gibbs we calculate the phase space averages of dynamical quantities and we find that these phase…
Numerical computations have become a pillar of all modern quantitative sciences. Any computation involves modeling--even if often this step is not made explicit--and any model has to neglect details while still being physically accurate.…
It is widely believed that the underlying reality behind statistical mechanics is a deterministic and unitary time evolution of a many-particle wave function, even though this is in conflict with the irreversible, stochastic nature of…
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…
Many complex systems are characterized by non-Boltzmann distribution functions of their statistical variables. If one wants to -- justified or not -- hold on to the maximum entropy principle for complex statistical systems (non-Boltzmann)…
Heat can flow from cold to hot at any phase separation. Therefore Lynden-Bell's gravo-thermal catastrophe must be reconsidered. The original objects of Thermodynamics, the separation of phases at first order phase transitions, like boiling…
The stability against perturbations of a dynamical system conserving a generalized phase-space volume is studied by exploiting the similarity between statistical physics formalism and that of ergodic theory. A general continuity theorem is…
Ordered chains (such as chains of amino acids) are ubiquitous in biological cells, and these chains perform specific functions contingent on the sequence of their components. Using the existence and general properties of such sequences as a…
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…