Symmetry and equilibrium states

Within the general framework ofC*-algebra approach to mathematical foundation of statistical mechanics, we prove a theorem which gives a natural explanation for the appearance of the chemical potential (as a thermodynamical parameter labelling equilibrium states) in the presence of a symmetry (under gauge transformations of the first kind). As a symmetry, we consider a compact abelian groupG acting as *-automorphisms of aC*-algebra (quasi-local field algebra) and commuting (elementwise) with the time translation automorphisms _t of. Under a technical assumption which is satisfied by examples of physical interest, we prove that the set of all extremal _t-KMS states (pure phases) ofG-fixed-point subalgebra (quasi-local observable algebra) of satisfying a certain faithfulness condition is in one-to-one correspondence with the set of all extremalG-invariant _t·_t-KMS states ^– of with varying over one-parameter subgroups ofG (the specification of being the specification of the chemical potential), where the correspondence is that the restriction of ^– to is .