Derivation and Improvements of the Quantum Canonical Ensemble from a Regularized Microcanonical Ensemble

Focusing on isolated macroscopic systems, described either in terms of a quantum mechanical or a classical model, our two key questions are: In how far does an initial ensemble (usually far from equilibrium and largely unknown in detail) evolve towards a stationary long-time behavior ("equilibration")? In how far is this steady state in agreement with the microcanonical ensemble as predicted by Statistical Mechanics ("thermalization")? In the first part of the paper, a recent...

This work describes the statistics for the occupation numbers of quantum levels in a large isolated quantum system, where all possible superpositions of eigenstates are allowed, provided all these superpositions have the same fixed energy. Such a condition is not equivalent to the conventional micro-canonical condition, because the latter limits the participating eigenstates to a very narrow energy window. The statistics is obtained analytically for both the entire system and...

We review here the microcanonical and canonical ensembles constructed on an underlying generalized quantum dynamics and the algebraic properties of the conserved quantities. We discuss the structure imposed on the microcanonical entropy by the equilibrium conditions.

This letter examines the consequences of a recently proposed modification of the postulate of equal {\it a priori} probability in quantum statistical mechanics. This modification, called the {\it quantum microcanonical postulate} (QMP), asserts that for a system in microcanonical equilibrium all pure quantum states having the same energy expectation value are realised with equal probability. A simple model of a quantum system that obeys the QMP and that has a nondegenerate sp...

The paper discusses the physical groundlessness of the models used for the derivation of canonical distribution and provides the experimental data demonstrating the incompleteness of quantum mechanics. The possibility of using statistical ensembles is presented as a consequence of the existence of probabilistic processes which are not accounted for by quantum mechanics. The paper provides a new analytical derivation of canonical distribution for macrosystems which takes into ...

Starting from the quantum mechanics for $N$ particles, we show that we can directly derive the microcanonical ensemble average of the physical quantity $A$ by using only the long time average and the equal probability assumption for the equal energy states. The system is considered to be embedded in the outer world and we describe them in terms of the density matrix method.

The microcanonical ensemble is a natural starting point of statistical mechanics. However, when it comes to perturbation theory in statistical mechanics, traditionally only the canonical and grand canonical ensembles have been used. In this article we show how the microcanonical ensemble can be directly used to carry out perturbation theory for both non-interacting and interacting systems. We obtain the first non-trivial order answers for the specific heat of anharmonic oscil...

An isolated quantum system is considered, prepared in a nonequilibrium initial state. In order to uniquely define the system dynamics, one has to construct a representative statistical ensemble. From the principle of least action it follows that the role of the evolution generator is played by a grand Hamiltonian, but not merely by its energy part. A theorem is proved expressing the commutators of field operators with operator products through variational derivatives of these...

The entropy definition in the microcanonical ensemble is revisited. We propose a novel definition for the microcanonical entropy that resolve the debate on the correct definition of the microcanonical entropy. In particular we show that this entropy definition fixes the problem inherent the exact extensivity of the caloric equation. Furthermore, this entropy reproduces results which are in agreement with the ones predicted with standard Boltzmann entropy when applied to macro...

A pedagogical derivation of statistical mechanics from quantum mechanics is provided, by means of open quantum systems. Besides, a new definition of Boltzmann entropy for a quantum closed system is also given to count microstates in a way consistent with the superposition principle. In particular, this new Boltzmann entropy is a constant that depends only on the dimension of the system's relevant Hilbert subspace. Finally, thermodynamics for quantum systems is investigated fo...