Effective grand-canonical description of condensation in negative-temperature regimes

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Iubini, Stefano, Politi, Antonio
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Iubini, Stefano
Politi, Antonio
author_facet Iubini, Stefano
Politi, Antonio
contents The observation of negative-temperature states in the localized phase of the Discrete Nonlinear Schrödinger (DNLS) equation has challenged statistical mechanics for a long time. For isolated systems, they can emerge as stationary extended states through a large-deviation mechanism occurring for finite sizes, while they are formally unstable in grand-canonical setups, being associated to an unlimited growth of the condensed fraction. Here, we show that negative-temperature states in open setups are metastable and their lifetime $τ$ is exponentially long with the temperature, $τ\approx \exp(λ|T|)$ (for $T<0$). A general expression for $λ$ is obtained in the case of a simplified stochastic model of non-interacting particles. In the DNLS model, the presence of an adiabatic invariant, makes $λ$ even larger because of the resulting freezing of the breather dynamics. This mechanism, based on the existence of two conservation laws, provides a new perspective over the statistical description of condensation processes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_15140
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Effective grand-canonical description of condensation in negative-temperature regimes
Iubini, Stefano
Politi, Antonio
Statistical Mechanics
The observation of negative-temperature states in the localized phase of the Discrete Nonlinear Schrödinger (DNLS) equation has challenged statistical mechanics for a long time. For isolated systems, they can emerge as stationary extended states through a large-deviation mechanism occurring for finite sizes, while they are formally unstable in grand-canonical setups, being associated to an unlimited growth of the condensed fraction. Here, we show that negative-temperature states in open setups are metastable and their lifetime $τ$ is exponentially long with the temperature, $τ\approx \exp(λ|T|)$ (for $T<0$). A general expression for $λ$ is obtained in the case of a simplified stochastic model of non-interacting particles. In the DNLS model, the presence of an adiabatic invariant, makes $λ$ even larger because of the resulting freezing of the breather dynamics. This mechanism, based on the existence of two conservation laws, provides a new perspective over the statistical description of condensation processes.
title Effective grand-canonical description of condensation in negative-temperature regimes
topic Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.15140