Friday, September 15, 4 pm
CREF Talk
Stefano Ruffo, SISSA, Trieste, Italy
Statistical Mechanics of Non-Additive Systems
The standard formulation of thermodynamics relies on additivity. However, numerous examples of macroscopic systems are non-additive due to long-range interactions among the constituents. These systems can attain equilibrium states under completely open conditions, for which energy, volume and number of particles simultaneously fluctuate. The unconstrained ensemble is the statistical ensemble describing completely open systems; temperature, pressure and chemical potential constitute a set of independent control parameters, thus violating the Gibbs-Duhem relation. We illustrate the properties of this ensemble by considering a modified version of the Thirring model with both attractive and repulsive long-range interactions, and we compare the results with those in other ensembles. This work contributes to understanding long-range interacting systems exchanging heat, work and matter with the environment.