Calculations of canonical averages from the grand canonical ensemble

Abstract

Grand canonical and canonical ensembles become equivalent in the thermodynamic limit, but when the system size is finite the results obtained in the two ensembles deviate from each other. In many important cases, the canonical ensemble provides an appropriate physical description but it is often much easier to perform the calculations in the corresponding grand canonical ensemble. We present a method to compute averages in the canonical ensemble based on calculations of the expectation values in the grand canonical ensemble. The number of particles, which is fixed in the canonical ensemble, is not necessarily the same as the average number of particles in the grand canonical ensemble.