Approximations of the sum of states by Laplace's method for a system of particles with a finite number of energy levels and application to limit theorems

Asymptotic approximations, asymptotic expansions (steepest descent, etc.) (41A60) Multidimensional problems (41A63) Laplace transform (44A10) Central limit and other weak theorems (60F05) Quantum equilibrium statistical mechanics (general) (82B10) Lattice systems (Ising, dimer, Potts, etc.) and systems on graphs arising in equilibrium statistical mechanics (82B20)

Abstract: We consider a generic system composed of a fixed number of particles distributed over a finite number of energy levels. We make only general assumptions about system's properties and the entropy. System's constraints other than fixed number of particles can be included by appropriate reduction of system's state space. For the entropy we consider three generic cases. It can have a maximum in the interior of system's state space or on the boundary. On the boundary we can have another two cases. There the entropy can increase linearly with increase of the number of particles and in the another case grows slower than linearly. The main results are approximations of system's sum of states using Laplace's method. Estimates of the error terms are also included. As an application, we prove the law of large numbers which yields the most probable state of the system. This state is the one with the maximal entropy. We also find limiting laws for the fluctuations. These laws are different for the considered cases of the entropy. They can be mixtures of Normal, Exponential and Discrete distributions. Explicit rates of convergence are provided for all the theorems.

Review text

In this work, the author considers a system composed of \(N\) particles distributed across \(m+1\) energy levels, whose configuration space \(\mathcal A\) can be restricted by further constraints. Such generic picture includes the case of a micro-canonical ensemble, if the total energy is fixed. It is assumed that a sufficiently regular entropy function \(S(x,N)\) is given, for which there is a unique configuration \(x^*\) which maximizes it, and moreover it satisfies one of two possible assumptions: \begin{itemize} \item [a.] \(x^*\) lies in the interior of \(\mathcal A\); \item [b.] \(x^*\) lies on the boundary of \(\mathcal A\) and it is non-critical (i.e., the derivative of the entropy function at the boundary is strictly decreasing). \end{itemize} For these cases, by using Laplace's method the author proves an approximation of the sum of states \[ \Sigma(N) = \sum_{\mathcal A \cap L_N} g(x) e^{S(x,N)}, \] where denotes \(L_N\) the discrete set of possible occupation numbers vectors of \(N\) particles into the \(m+1\) energy levels, and \(g\) is an arbitrary sufficiently smooth function. They then consider the additional assumption that, as \(N\) goes to infinity, \(S(x,N)\) behaves asymptotically as a product of two functions \(h(N)f(x)\), the first depending only on the number of particles \(N\) and the second of the configuration \(x\). For these cases, using the previous approximation they show that the ensemble distribution proportional to \(e^{S(x,N)}\) converges in distribution to the constant \(x^*\), as well obtaining the limiting laws for the fluctuation from the average.

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Law of large numbers unifying Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein and Zipf-Mandelbrot distributions, and related fluctuations

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