scholarly journals Statistical Mechanics at Strong Coupling: A Bridge between Landsberg’s Energy Levels and Hill’s Nanothermodynamics

Nanomaterials ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 2471
Author(s):  
Rodrigo de Miguel ◽  
J. Miguel Rubí

We review and show the connection between three different theories proposed for the thermodynamic treatment of systems not obeying the additivity ansatz of classical thermodynamics. In the 1950s, Landsberg proposed that when a system comes into contact with a heat bath, its energy levels are redistributed. Based on this idea, he produced an extended thermostatistical framework that accounts for unknown interactions with the environment. A decade later, Hill devised his celebrated nanothermodynamics, where he introduced the concept of subdivision potential, a new thermodynamic variable that accounts for the vanishing additivity of increasingly smaller systems. More recently, a thermostatistical framework at strong coupling has been formulated to account for the presence of the environment through a Hamiltonian of mean force. We show that this modified Hamiltonian yields a temperature-dependent energy landscape as earlier suggested by Landsberg, and it provides a thermostatistical foundation for the subdivision potential, which is the cornerstone of Hill’s nanothermodynamics.

1997 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 447-456
Author(s):  
Ingo Biertümpel ◽  
Hans-Herbert Schmidtke

Abstract Lifetime measurements down to nearly liquid helium temperatures are used for determining energy levels and transition rates between excited levels and relaxations into the ground state. Energies are obtained from temperature dependent lifetimes by fitting experimental curves to model functions pertinent for thermally activated processes. Rates are calculated from solutions of rate equations. Similar parameters for pure and doped Pt(IV) hexahalogeno complexes indicate that excited levels largely belong to molecular units. Some of the rates between excited states are only somewhat larger than decay rates into the ground state, which is a consequence of the polyexponential decay measured also at low temperature (2 K). In the series of halogen complexes, the rates between spinorbit levels resulting from 3T1g increase from fluorine to bromine, although energy splittings become larger. Due to the decreasing population of higher excited states in this series, K^PtFö shows a tri-exponential, K2PtCl6 a bi-exponential and FoPtBr6 a mono-exponential decay. In the latter case the population density of higher excited states relaxes so fast that emission occurs primarily from the lowest excited Γ3(3T1g) level. Phase transitions and emission from chromophores on different sites can also be observed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Yoshihara ◽  
T. Fuse ◽  
Z. Ao ◽  
S. Ashhab ◽  
K. Kakuyanagi ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Fabrizio Altarelli ◽  
Rémi Monasson ◽  
Guilhem Semerjian ◽  
Francesco Zamponi

This chapter surveys a part of the intense research activity that has been devoted by theoretical physicists to the study of randomly generated k-SAT instances. It can be at first sight surprising that there is a connection between physics and computer science. However low-temperature statistical mechanics concerns precisely the behaviour of the low-lying configurations of an energy landscape, in other words the optimization of a cost function. Moreover the ensemble of random k-SAT instances exhibit phase transitions, a phenomenon mostly studied in physics (think for instance at the transition between liquid and gaseous water). Besides the introduction of general concepts of statistical mechanics and their translations in computer science language, the chapter presents results on the location of the satisfiability transition, the detailed picture of the satisfiable regime and the various phase transitions it undergoes, and algorithmic issues for random k-SAT instances.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document