Related papers: Microcanonical vs. canonical thermodynamics
We compare phase transition(-like) phenomena in small model systems for both microcanonical and canonical ensembles. The model systems correspond to a few classical (non-quantum) point particles confined in a one-dimensional box and…
Microcanonical thermodynamics (MCTh) is contrasted to canonical thermodynamics (CTh). At phase transitions of 1.order the two ensembles are NOT equivalent even in the thermodynamic limit . Energy fluctuations do not vanish and phase…
Microcanonical statistics can be well applied to non-extensive systems like nuclei, atomic clusters and systems at phase transitions of first order with inhomogeneous configurations like phase separation. No thermodynamic limit has to be…
Phase transitions of first and second order can easily be distinguished in small systems in the microcanonical ensemble. Configurations of phase coexistence, which are suppressed in the canonical formulation, carry important information…
A microcanonical first order transition, connecting a clustered to a homogeneous phase, is studied from both the thermodynamic and dynamical point of view for a N-body Hamiltonian system with infinite-range couplings. In the microcanonical…
Microcanonical thermodynamics (MT) is analysed for phase transitions of first and second order in finite systems. The transiton temperature, the latent heat and the surface tension of first order transitions can easily be determined by MT…
Equilibrium statistics of finite Hamiltonian systems is fundamentally described by the microcanonical ensemble (ME). Canonical, or grand-canonical partition functions are deduced from this by Laplace transform. Only in the thermodynamic…
Here we first develop the thermodynamics of microcanonical phase transitions of first and second order in systems which are thermodynamically stable in the sense of van Hove. We show how both kinds of phase transitions can unambiguously be…
Within the micro-canonical ensemble phase transitions of first order can be identified without invoking the thermodynamic limit. We show for the liquid-gas transition of sodium, potassium, and iron at normal pressure that the transition…
We investigate the relation between various statistical ensembles of finite systems. If ensembles differ at the level of fluctuations of the order parameter, we show that the equations of states can present major differences. A sufficient…
The microcanonical ensemble has long been a starting point for the development of thermodynamics from statistical mechanics. However, this approach presents two problems. First, it predicts that the entropy is only defined on a discrete set…
The grand canonical ensemble lies at the core of quantum and classical statistical mechanics. A small system thermalizes to this ensemble while exchanging heat and particles with a bath. A quantum system may exchange quantities represented…
A new method is proposed for a treatment of ideal quantum gases in the microcanonical ensemble near the thermodynamic limit. The method allows rigorous asymptotic calculations of the average number of particles and particle number…
In the realm of statistical mechanics, it has been established that there is no distinction between the micro-canonical and canonical ensembles in the thermodynamic limit. However, this paradigm may alter when addressing statistical…
Two examples of Microcanonical Potts models, 2-dimensional nearest neighbor and mean field, are considered via exact enumeration of states and analytical asymptotic methods. In the interval of energies corresponding to a first order phase…
Heat capacities of model systems with finite numbers of effective degrees of freedom are evaluated using canonical and microcanonical thermodynamics. Discrepancies between both approaches, which are observed even in the infinite-size limit,…
We consider the Microcanonical Variational Principle for the vortex system in a bounded domain. In particular we are interested in the thermodynamic properties of the system in domains of second kind, i.e. for which the equivalence of…
We consider a Hamiltonian system made of $N$ classical particles moving in two dimensions, coupled via an {\it infinite-range interaction} gauged by a parameter $A$. This system shows a low energy phase with most of the particles trapped in…
For models which exhibit a continuous phase transition in the thermodynamic limit a numerical study of small systems reveals a non-monotonic behaviour of the microcanonical specific heat as a function of the system size. This is in contrast…
We calculate exactly both the microcanonical and canonical thermodynamic functions (TDFs) for a one-dimensional model system with piecewise constant Lennard-Jones type pair interactions. In the case of an isolated $N$-particle system, the…