Substantiating the Gibbs method in classical statistical mechanics

An approach for the substantiation of the Gibbs method in equilibrium statistical thermodynamics is described; this approach is based not on the quasiergodicity hypothesis, but on the weaker assumption of macroscopic determinacy of thermodynamic systems. A generalized microcanonical Gibbs distribution is obtained. An electron gas in a homogeneous magnetic field is taken as an example. It is shown that the classical diamagnetism of the given system is not zero in the sense of quasimean nor of generalized Gibbs ensemble distributions. The equation of state of an electron as in a magnetic field is obtained, and hence it is shown that classical diamagnetism only vanishes if isotropy of the pressure at the vessel wall is assumed.Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 6, pp. 65–68, June, 1978.     

Principles of statistical mechanics: The energy duality

We argue that statistical mechanics of systems with relaxation implies breaking the energy function of systems into two having different transformation rules. With this duality the energy approach incorporates the generalized vortex forces. We show general theorems and their implications and apply the approach to the particle confinement in fields of rotational symmetry. Misleading associations with the theories of quasienergy and generalized thermodynamic potential are exposed.     

Elementary particle scattering and statistical quasi-particles in quantum statistical mechanics

Previous work relating the thermodynamic potential to elementary particle S-matrix elements is generalized and rederived directly from the expressions for the diagrams of many body theory. The divergent physical region poles are shown to introduce energy derivatives of mass shell delta functions which tend to shift the energies of the scattering particles away from the elementary particle mass shell. These shifted energies are related to the statistical quasiparticle energies introduced by Balian and De Dominicis. The work of these authors is generalized to show that to all orders in the coupling strengths the many body diagrams for any system described by a relativistic or non-relativistic field theory can be summed to give: (1) the entropy and the statistical average of a non-spontaneously broken, conserved charge in terms of ideal gas-like formulae involving statistical quasi-particle energies; (2) the thermodynamic potential in terms of diagonal matrix elements of products of transition amplitudes wherein the energies of all external particles and the energy arguments of all ideal gas occupation numbers are the statistical quasi-particle energies.     

A variational formulation of equilibrium statistical mechanics and the Gibbs phase rule

It is shown that for an infinite lattice system, thermodynamic equilibrium is the solution of a variational problem involving a mean entropy of states introduced earlier [2]. As an application, a version of the Gibbs phase rule is proved.     

Principles of statistical mechanics of uncorrelated random networks

We develop a statistical mechanics approach for random networks with uncorrelated vertices. We construct equilibrium statistical ensembles of such networks and obtain their partition functions and main characteristics. We find simple dynamical construction procedures that produce equilibrium uncorrelated random graphs with an arbitrary degree distribution. In particular, we show that in equilibrium uncorrelated networks, fat-tailed degree distributions may exist only starting from some critical average number of connections of a vertex, in a phase with a condensate of edges.     

The origin of computational statistical mechanics in France

The European Physical Journal H - The two main methodologies of computational Statistical Mechanics, namely the stochastic Monte Carlo and the deterministic Molecular Dynamic methods, were...     

Continuity of the temperature and derivation of the Gibbs canonical distribution in classical statistical mechanics

For a classical system of interacting particles we prove, in the microcanonical ensemble formalism of statistical mechanics, that the thermodynamic-limit entropy density is a differentiable function of the energy density and that its derivative, the thermodynamic-limit inverse temperature, is a continuous function of the energy density. We also prove that the inverse temperature of a finite system approaches the thermodynamic-limit inverse temperature as the volume of the system increases indefinitely. Finally, we show that the probability distribution for a system of fixed size in thermal contact with a large system approaches the Gibbs canonical distribution as the size of the large system increases indefinitely, if the composite system is distributed microcanonically.Supported by The British Council and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.     

Limit Gibbs state for some classes of one-dimensional systems of quantum statistical mechanics

We prove the existence of the limit Gibbs state for one-dimensional continuous quantum fermion systems with non-hard-core, non-negative, rapidly decreasing pair interaction potentials. Existence of the limit Gibbs state is also established for one-dimensional continuous quantum boson systems with pair interaction potentials as above which, in addition, increase sufficiently fast at small distances.This work is partially performed with the support of the National Council of Researches of Italy     

Gibbs ensembles in relativistic classical and quantum mechanics

Classical and quantum Gibbs ensembles are constructed for equilibrium statistical mechanics in the framework of an extension to many-body theory of a relativistic mechanics proposed by Stueckelberg. In addition to the usual chemical potential in the grand canonical ensemble, there is a new potential corresponding to the mass degree of freedom of relativistic systems. It is shown that in the nonrelativistic limit the relativistic ensembles we have obtained reduce to the usual ones, and mass fluctuations for the free-particle gas approach the fluctuations in N. The ultrarelativistic limit of the canonical ensemble for the free-particle gas differs from the corresponding limit of the ensemble proposed by Jüttner and Pauli. Due to the mass degree of freedom, the quantum counting of states is different from that of the nonrelativistic theory. If the mass distribution is sufficiently sharp, the thermodynamical effects of this multiplicity will not be large. There may, however, be detectable effects such as a shift in the Fermi level and the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation, and some change in specific heats.     

Regge theory and statistical mechanics

An interesting connection between the Regge theory of scattering, the Veneziano amplitude, the Lee–Yang theorems in statistical mechanics and nonextensive Renyi entropy is addressed. In this scheme the standard entropy and the Renyi entropy appear to be different limits of a unique mathematical object. This framework sheds light on the physical origin of nonextensivity. A non-trivial application to spin glass theory is shortly outlined.     

Pattern recognition and statistical mechanics

A mathematical connection is established between classes of problems in pattern recognition and in statistical mechanics. More explicitly, the former class embraces problems arising from the decision-theoretic approach to the automatic recognition of certain properties of patterns containing many targets. The latter class contains almost all problems involving the statistical mechanics of classical systems of interacting particles. The usefulness of the mathematical connection lies in the fact that it provides a bridge for the transfer of approximation methodologies from one area to the other. As examples of such a transfer this paper presents applications of a least mean square approximation method, which is well known in pattern recognition, to two problems in classical statistical mechanics, namely, the one-dimensional Ising problem and the one-component plasma problem. These problems were chosen because their solutions are well understood (the exact solution of the one-dimensional Ising model and the solution of the one-component plasma that is exact in the low concentration limit are both very well known) and consequently they are appropriate as test beds for the new approximation method. The simplest nontrivial approximate trial functions were used for the calculation of the average values of certain observables and the results were in agreement with the corresponding exact results for the Ising model in the limit of high temperature and for the one-component plasma in the limit of low concentration.     

Structural transitions in granular packs: statistical mechanics and statistical geometry investigations

We investigate equal spheres packings generated from several experiments and from a large number of different numerical simulations. The structural organization of these disordered packings is studied in terms of the network of common neighbours. This geometrical analysis reveals sharp changes in the network’s clustering occurring at the packing fractions (fraction of volume occupied by the spheres respect to the total volume, ρ) corresponding to the so called Random Loose Packing limit (RLP, ρ ～ 0.555) and Random Close Packing limit (RCP, ρ ～ 0.645). At these packing fractions we also observe abrupt changes in the fluctuations of the portion of free volume around each sphere. We analyze such fluctuations by means of a statistical mechanics approach and we show that these anomalies are associated to sharp variations in a generalized thermodynamical variable which is the analogous for these a-thermal systems to the specific heat in thermal systems.     

Quantum and statistical mechanics of anyons

We show that the hamiltonian of a system of identical anyons, when expanded about the bosinic limit θ = 0 to first order in θ, contains a two-body repulsive δ-function potential. One consequence of this is that only the second virial coefficient in the equation of state has a cusp at that value of θ. The repulsive potential also affects the ground-state properties of an anyonic system.     

非广延统计力学与完全开放系统的统计分布

简介了非广延统计力学的Tsallis统计,用其计算了理想气体;推导出了以含有非广延熵常数的Shannon熵为基础和以Tsallis熵为基础的非广延统计力学的完全开放系统的统计分布及计算热力学量的公式;讨论表明:Tsallis熵对应的统计分布及计算热力学量的公式在非广延参量q→1时,完全过渡到了Shannon熵对应的形式.