Nonanalytic microscopic phase transitions and temperature oscillations in the microcanonical ensemble: An exactly solvable one-dimensional model for evaporation

Abstract

We calculate exactly both the microcanonical and canonical thermodynamic functions (TDFs) for a one-dimensional model system with piecewise constant Lennard-Jones type pair interactions. In the case of an isolated N-particle system, the microcanonical TDFs exhibit (N - 1) singular (nonanalytic) microscopic phase transitions of the formal order N/2, separating N energetically different evaporation (dissociation) states. In a suitably designed evaporation experiment, these types of phase transitions should manifest themselves in the form of pressure and temperature oscillations, indicating cooling by evaporation. In the presence of a heat bath (thermostat), such oscillations are absent, but the canonical heat capacity shows a characteristic peak, indicating the temperature-induced dissociation of the one-dimensional chain. The distribution of complex zeros of the canonical partition may be used to identify different degrees of dissociation in the canonical ensemble.