Related papers: Studying Thermodynamics of Metastable States
We present a general theory of classical metastability in open quantum systems. Metastability is a consequence of a large separation in timescales in the dynamics, leading to the existence of a regime when states of the system appear…
Based on classical statistical thermodynamics, we develop a theoretical approach that provides new insight into how macroscopic and microscopic physical properties are bridged via crystal lattice for condensed mat- ters. We find that in…
There is a common view in thermodynamics that the behavior of a macroscopic system can be described by only a few state variables. Although this is true for many cases, it is unclear whether it is meaningful to ask how many state variables…
Statistical mechanics assumes that a quantum many-body system at low temperature can be effectively described by its Gibbs state. However, many complex quantum systems exist only as metastable states of dissipative open system dynamics,…
We study the effect of metastable states on the relaxation process (and hence information propagation) in locally coupled and boundary-driven structures. We first give a general argument to show that metastable states are inevitable even in…
We numerically determine the entropy for heat-conducting states, which is connected to the so-called excess heat considered as a basic quantity for steady-state thermodynamics in nonequilibrium. We adopt an efficient method to estimate the…
We study the interplay among cooling, heating, conduction, and magnetic fields in gravitationally stratified plasmas using simplified, plane-parallel numerical simulations. Since the physical heating mechanism remains uncertain in massive…
This thesis is devoted to the theoretical study of slow thermodynamic processes in non-equilibrium stochastic systems. Its main result is a physically and mathematically consistent construction of relevant thermodynamic quantities in the…
This paper provides an overview of the research on the metastable behavior of the Ising model. We analyze the transition times from the set of metastable states to the set of the stable states by identifying the critical configurations that…
A thermodynamics for systems at a stationary states is formulated. It is based upon the assumption of the existence of local equilibrium in phase space which enables one to interpret the probability density ans its conjugated nonequilibrium…
The correlations of the free-energy landscape of mean-field spin glasses at different temperatures are investigated, concentrating on models with a first order freezing transition. Using a ``potential function'' we follow the metastable…
The effect of finite temperature $T$ and finite strain rate $\dot\gamma$ on the statistical physics of plastic deformations in amorphous solids made of $N$ particles is investigated. We recognize three regimes of temperature where the…
Understanding relaxation processes is an important unsolved problem in many areas of physics. A key challenge in studying such non-equilibrium dynamics is the scarcity of experimental tools for characterizing their complex transient states.…
For classical discrete systems under constant composition typically refferred to substitutional alloys, we propose calculation method of Helmholtz free energy based on a set of special microscopic states. The advantage of the method is that…
In this paper we develop a method introduced by one of us to study metastable states in spin glasses. We consider a `potential function' defined as the free energy of a system at a given temperature $T$ constrained to have a fixed overlap…
The decay rate for a particle in a metastable cubic potential is investigated in the quantum regime by the Euclidean path integral method in semiclassical approximation. The imaginary time formalism allows one to monitor the system as a…
The preferential formation of one solid over the other, as it precipitates out from the melt at specific temperatures, is often explained by invoking a competition between thermodynamic and kinetic control. A quantitative theory, however,…
The premelting of ice is well known, but little is known about how the premelted and solid surfaces convert to each other. In this work, the transition dynamics between two phases are revealed with large-scale molecular dynamics…
Events in mesoscopic systems often take place at first-passage times, as is for instance the case for a colloidal particle that escapes a metastable state. An interesting question is how much work an external agent has done on a particle…
We study the single-particle distributions of three-dimensional hard sphere gas described by the Boltzmann equation. We focus on the steady homogeneous isotropic solutions in thermodynamically open conditions, i.e. in the presence of…