No Arabic abstract
In a microcanonical ensemble (constant $NVE$, hard reflecting walls) and in a molecular dynamics ensemble (constant $NVEmathbf{PG}$, periodic boundary conditions) with a number $N$ of smooth elastic hard spheres in a $d$-dimensional volume $V$ having a total energy $E$, a total momentum $mathbf{P}$, and an overall center of mass position $mathbf{G}$, the individual velocity components, velocity moduli, and energies have transformed beta distributions with different arguments and shape parameters depending on $d$, $N$, $E$, the boundary conditions, and possible symmetries in the initial conditions. This can be shown marginalizing the joint distribution of individual energies, which is a symmetric Dirichlet distribution. In the thermodynamic limit the beta distributions converge to gamma distributions with different arguments and shape or scale parameters, corresponding respectively to the Gaussian, i.e., Maxwell-Boltzmann, Maxwell, and Boltzmann or Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution. These analytical results agree with molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations with different numbers of hard disks or spheres and hard reflecting walls or periodic boundary conditions. The agreement is perfect with our Monte Carlo algorithm, which acts only on velocities independently of positions with the collision versor sampled uniformly on a unit half sphere in $d$ dimensions, while slight deviations appear with our molecular dynamics simulations for the smallest values of $N$.
In the present work, we discuss how the functional form of thermodynamic observables can be deduced from the geometric properties of subsets of phase space. The geometric quantities taken into account are mainly extrinsic curvatures of the energy level sets of the Hamiltonian of a system under investigation. In particular, it turns out that peculiar behaviours of thermodynamic observables at a phase transition point are rooted in more fundamental changes of the geometry of the energy level sets in phase space. More specifically, we discuss how microcanonical and geometrical descriptions of phase-transitions are shaped in the special case of $phi^4$ models with either nearest-neighbours and mean-field interactions.
The aim of this paper is to introduce a new technique for calculation of observables, in particular multiplicity distributions, in various statistical ensembles at finite volume. The method is based on Fourier analysis of the grand canonical partition function. Taylor expansion of the generating function is used to separate contributions to the partition function in their power in volume. We employ Laplaces asymptotic expansion to show that any equilibrium distribution of multiplicity, charge, energy, etc. tends to a multivariate normal distribution in the thermodynamic limit. Gram-Charlier expansion allows additionally for calculation of finite volume corrections. Analytical formulas are presented for inclusion of resonance decay and finite acceptance effects directly into the system partition function. This paper consolidates and extends previously published results of current investigation into properties of statistical ensembles.
Starting from a master equation, we derive the evolution equation for the size distribution of elements in an evolving system, where each element can grow, divide into two, and produce new elements. We then probe general solutions of the evolution quation, to obtain such skew distributions as power-law, log-normal, and Weibull distributions, depending on the growth or division and production. Specifically, repeated production of elements of uniform size leads to power-law distributions, whereas production of elements with the size distributed according to the current distribution as well as no production of new elements results in log-normal distributions. Finally, division into two, or binary fission, bears Weibull distributions. Numerical simulations are also carried out, confirming the validity of the obtained solutions.
A system of hard spheres exhibits physics that is controlled only by their density. This comes about because the interaction energy is either infinite or zero, so all allowed configurations have exactly the same energy. The low density phase is liquid, while the high density phase is crystalline, an example of order by disorder as it is driven purely by entropic considerations. Here we study a family of hard spin models, which we call hardcore spin models, where we replace the translational degrees of freedom of hard spheres with the orientational degrees of freedom of lattice spins. Their hardcore interaction serves analogously to divide configurations of the many spin system into allowed and disallowed sectors. We present detailed results on the square lattice in $d=2$ for a set of models with $mathbb{Z}_n$ symmetry, which generalize Potts models, and their $U(1)$ limits, for ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic senses of the interaction, which we refer to as exclusion and inclusion models. As the exclusion/inclusion angles are varied, we find a Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition between a disordered phase and an ordered phase with quasi-long-ranged order, which is the form order by disorder takes in these systems. These results follow from a set of height representations, an ergodic cluster algorithm, and transfer matrix calculations.
Large deviation theory and instanton calculus for stochastic systems are widely used to gain insight into the evolution and probability of rare events. At its core lies the realization that rare events are, under the right circumstances, dominated by their least unlikely realization. Their computation through a saddle-point approximation of the path integral for the corresponding stochastic field theory then reduces an inefficient stochastic sampling problem into a deterministic optimization problem: finding the path of smallest action, the instanton. In the presence of heavy tails, though, standard algorithms to compute the instanton critically fail to converge. The reason for this failure is the divergence of the scaled cumulant generating function (CGF) due to a non-convex large deviation rate function. We propose a solution to this problem by convexifying the rate function through nonlinear reparametrization of the observable, which allows us to compute instantons even in the presence of super-exponential or algebraic tail decay. The approach is generalizable to other situations where the existence of the CGF is required, such as exponential tilting in importance sampling for Monte-Carlo algorithms. We demonstrate the proposed formalism by applying it to rare events in several stochastic systems with heavy tails, including extreme power spikes in fiber optics induced by soliton formation.