Constant Energy Hypersurfaces Research Articles

Statistical Mechanics of an Integrable System

We provide here an explicit example of Khinchin's idea that the validity of equilibrium statistical mechanics in high dimensional systems does not depend on the details of the dynamics. This point of view is supported by extensive numerical simulation of the one-dimensional Toda chain, an integrable non-linear Hamiltonian system where all Lyapunov exponents are zero by definition. We study the relaxation to equilibrium starting from very atypical initial conditions and focusing on energy equipartion among Fourier modes, as done in the original Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou numerical experiment. We find evidence that in the general case, i.e., not in the perturbative regime where Toda and Fourier modes are close to each other, there is a fast reaching of thermal equilibrium in terms of a single temperature. We also find that equilibrium fluctuations, in particular the behaviour of specific heat as function of temperature, are in agreement with analytic predictions drawn from the ordinary Gibbs ensemble, still having no conflict with the established validity of the Generalized Gibbs Ensemble for the Toda model. Our results suggest thus that even an integrable Hamiltonian system reaches thermalization on the constant energy hypersurface, provided that the considered observables do not strongly depend on one or few of the conserved quantities. This suggests that dynamical chaos is irrelevant for thermalization in the large-$N$ limit, where any macroscopic observable reads of as a collective variable with respect to the coordinate which diagonalize the Hamiltonian. The possibility for our results to be relevant for the problem of thermalization in generic quantum systems, i.e., non-integrable ones, is commented at the end.

Ergodicity, mixing, and recurrence in the three rotor problem.

In the classical three rotor problem, three equal point masses move on a circle subject to attractive cosine potentials of strength g. In the center of mass frame, energy E is the only known conserved quantity. In earlier works [Krishnaswami and Senapati, Indian Acad. Sci. Conf. Ser. 2(1), 139 (2019), and Chaos 29(12), 123121 (2019)], an order-chaos-order transition was discovered in this system along with a band of global chaos for 5.33g≤E≤5.6g. Here, we provide numerical evidence for ergodicity and mixing in this band. The distributions of relative angles and angular momenta along generic trajectories are shown to approach the corresponding distributions over constant energy hypersurfaces (weighted by the Liouville measure) as a power-law in time. Moreover, trajectories emanating from a small volume are shown to become uniformly distributed over constant energy hypersurfaces, indicating that the dynamics is mixing. Outside this band, ergodicity and mixing fail, though the distributions of angular momenta over constant energy hypersurfaces show interesting phase transitions from Wignerian to bimodal with increasing energy. Finally, in the band of global chaos, the distribution of recurrence times to finite size cells is found to follow an exponential law with the mean recurrence time satisfying a scaling law involving an exponent consistent with global chaos and ergodicity.

Increase of quantum volume entropy in presence of degenerate eigenenergies

The entropy of a classical thermally isolated Hamiltonian system is given by the logarithm of the measure of phase space enclosed by the constant energy hyper-surface, also known as volume entropy. It has been shown that on average the latter cannot decrease if the initial state is sampled from a classical passive distribution. Quantum extension of this result has been shown, but only for systems with a non-degenerate energy spectrum. Here we further extend to the case of possible degeneracies.

Microcanonical Entropy and Dynamical Measure of Temperature for Systems with Two First Integrals

We consider a generic classical many particle system described by an autonomous Hamiltonian H(x 1,…,x N+2) which, in addition, has a conserved quantity V(x 1,…,x N+2)=v, so that the Poisson bracket {H,V} vanishes. We derive in detail the microcanonical expressions for entropy and temperature. We show that both of these quantities depend on multidimensional integrals over sub-manifolds given by the intersection of the constant energy hyper-surfaces with those defined by V(x 1,…,x N+2)=v. We show that temperature and higher order derivatives of entropy are microcanonical observable that, under the hypothesis of ergodicity, can be calculated as time averages of suitable functions. We derive the explicit expression of the function that gives the temperature.

Pion Production Via Resonance Decay in a Non-extensive Quark-Gluon Medium with Non-additive Energy Composition Rule

Resonance production and decay into pion pairs is simulated in a non-extensive quark matter with multi-particle interactions. Final state pion spectra are found to take the form of the Tsallis distribution, in accordance with measurements. It has also been shown that, if a large number of particles with these multi-particle interactions are constrained to a constant energy hyper-surface in phase space, the one-particle distribution is the Tsallis distribution.

GEOMETRIC VARIATIONS OF THE BOLTZMANN ENTROPY

We perform a calculation of the first and second order infinitesimal variations, with respect to energy, of the Boltzmann entropy of constant energy hypersurfaces of a system with a finite number of degrees of freedom. We comment on the stability interpretation of the second variation in this framework.

On the mechanical foundations of thermodynamics: The generalized Helmholtz theorem

An elegant but seldom appreciated effort to provide a mechanical model of equilibrium thermodynamics dates back to the Helmholtz theorem (HT). According to this theorem, the thermodynamic relations hold mechanically (without probabilistic assumptions) in the case of one-dimensional monocyclic systems. Thanks to a discrete picture of the phase space, Boltzmann was able to apply the HT to multi-dimensional ergodic systems, suggesting that the thermodynamic relations we observe in macroscopic systems at equilibrium are a direct consequence of the microscopic laws of dynamics alone. Here I review Boltzmann's argument and show that, using the language of the modern ergodic theory, it can be safely re-expressed on a continuum phase space as a generalized Helmholtz theorem (GHT), which can be readily proved. Along the way the agreement between the Helmholtz–Boltzmann theory and that of P. Hertz (based on adiabatic invariance) is revealed. Both theories, in fact, lead to define the entropy as the logarithm of the phase-space volume enclosed by the constant energy hyper-surface ( volume entropy).

Topology and phase transitions: From an exactly solvable model to a relation between topology and thermodynamics

The elsewhere surmized topological origin of phase transitions is given here important evidence through the analytic study of an exactly solvable model for which both topology of submanifolds of configuration space and thermodynamics are worked out. The model is a mean-field one with a k-body interaction. It undergoes a second-order phase transition for k=2 and a first-order one for k >2 . This opens a perspective for the understanding of the deep origin of first and second-order phase transitions, respectively. In particular, a remarkable theoretical result consists of a mathematical characterization of first-order transitions. Moreover, we show that a "reduced" configuration space can be defined in terms of collective variables, such that the correspondence between phase transitions and topology changes becomes one-to-one, for this model. Finally, an unusual relationship is worked out between the microscopic description of a classical N -body system and its macroscopic thermodynamic behavior. This consists of a functional dependence of thermodynamic entropy upon the Morse indexes of the critical points (saddles) of the constant energy hypersurfaces of the microscopic 2N-dimensional phase space. Thus phase space (and configuration space) topology is directly related to thermodynamics.

Phase space geometry and stochasticity thresholds in hamiltonian dynamics

Results of numerical computations of the largest Lyapunov exponent lambda(1)(varepsilon,N) as a function of the energy density varepsilon and the number of particles N are here reported for a Fermi-Pasta-Ulam alpha+beta model. These results show the coexistence at large N of two thresholds: a stochasticity threshold, found before for the alpha model alone, and a strong stochasticity threshold (SST), found before for the beta model alone. Although this coexistence may seem at first sight plausible, it is not obvious a priori that the alpha+beta model superimposes properties of the alpha and beta models independently. The main point of this paper, however, is a geometric characterization of the SST via the mean curvature of the constant energy hypersurfaces in the phase space of the model and the characteristic decay time of its time autocorrelation function tau(c)(varepsilon,N), which correlates with that of lambda(1)(varepsilon,N) for fixed N. This appears to provide important information on the very complicated geometry of the phase space of this simple solidlike model.