Preface

Journal of Statistical Physics -     

Lattice gas models in contact with stochastic reservoirs: Local equilibrium and relaxation to the steady state

Extending the results of a previous work, we consider a class of discrete lattice gas models in a finite interval whose bulk dynamics consists of stochastic exchanges which conserve the particle number, and with stochastic dynamics at the boundaries chosen to model infinite particle reservoirs at fixed chemical potentials. We establish here the local equilibrium structure of the stationary measures for these models. Further, we prove as a law of large numbers that the time-dependent empirical density field converges to a deterministic limit process which is the solution of the initial-boundary value problem for a nonlinear diffusion equation.Supported in part by NSF Grants DMR89-18903 and INT85-21407. G.E. and H.S. also supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft     

A remark on degeneration of a compact Riemann surface of genus 2

A compact Riemann surface of genus 2, whose period matrix (π _ij ) is arbitrary, is degenerated, thus removing a restriction on the degeneration in a previous paper by the author.     

GHS and other inequalities

We use a transformation due to Percus to give a simple derivation of the Griffiths, Hurst, and Sherman, and some other new inequalities, for Ising ferromagnets with pair interactions. The proof makes use of the Griffiths, Kelly, and Sherman and the Fortuin, Kasteleyn, and Ginibre inequalities.Work supported in part by USAFOSR-73-2430.     

Steady state self-diffusion at low density

We prove that the motion of a test particle in a hard sphere fluid in thermal equilibrium converges, in the Boltzmann-Grad limit, to the stochastic process governed by the linear Boltzmann equation. The convergence is in the sense of weak convergence of the path measures. We use this result to study the steady state of a binary mixture of hard spheres of different colors (but equal masses and diameters) induced by color-changing boundary conditions. In the Boltzmann-Grad limit the steady state is determined by the stationary solution of the linear Boltzmann equation under appropriate boundary conditions.Supported in part by NSF Grant No. PHY 78-15920-02.Supported by a Heisenberg Fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.     

Universal Probability Distribution for the Wave Function of a Quantum System Entangled with its Environment

A quantum system (with Hilbert space \({\mathcal {H}_{1}}\)) entangled with its environment (with Hilbert space \({\mathcal {H}_{2}}\)) is usually not attributed to a wave function but only to a reduced density matrix \({\rho_{1}}\). Nevertheless, there is a precise way of attributing to it a random wave function \({\psi_{1}}\), called its conditional wave function, whose probability distribution \({\mu_{1}}\) depends on the entangled wave function \({\psi \in \mathcal {H}_{1} \otimes \mathcal {H}_{2}}\) in the Hilbert space of system and environment together. It also depends on a choice of orthonormal basis of \({\mathcal {H}_{2}}\) but in relevant cases, as we show, not very much. We prove several universality (or typicality) results about \({\mu_{1}}\), e.g., that if the environment is sufficiently large then for every orthonormal basis of \({\mathcal {H}_{2}}\), most entangled states \({\psi}\) with given reduced density matrix \({\rho_{1}}\) are such that \({\mu_{1}}\) is close to one of the so-called GAP (Gaussian adjusted projected) measures, \({GAP(\rho_{1})}\). We also show that, for most entangled states \({\psi}\) from a microcanonical subspace (spanned by the eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian with energies in a narrow interval \({[E, E+ \delta E]}\)) and most orthonormal bases of \({\mathcal {H}_{2}}\), \({\mu_{1}}\) is close to \({GAP(\rm {tr}_{2} \rho_{mc})}\) with \({\rho_{mc}}\) the normalized projection to the microcanonical subspace. In particular, if the coupling between the system and the environment is weak, then \({\mu_{1}}\) is close to \({GAP(\rho_\beta)}\) with \({\rho_\beta}\) the canonical density matrix on \({\mathcal {H}_{1}}\) at inverse temperature \({\beta=\beta(E)}\). This provides the mathematical justification of our claim in Goldstein et al. (J Stat Phys 125: 1193–1221, 2006) that GAP measures describe the thermal equilibrium distribution of the wave function.     

Approach to Equilibrium for the Stochastic NLS

We study the approach to equilibrium, described by a Gibbs measure, for a system on a d-dimensional torus evolving according to a stochastic nonlinear Schrödinger equation (SNLS) with a high frequency truncation. We prove exponential approach to the truncated Gibbs measure both for the focusing and defocusing cases when the dynamics is constrained via suitable boundary conditions to regions of the Fourier space where the Hamiltonian is convex. Our method is based on establishing a spectral gap for the non self-adjoint Fokker-Planck operator governing the time evolution of the measure, which is uniform in the frequency truncation N. The limit N →∞ is discussed.