Issue |
EPL
Volume 96, Number 5, December 2011
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 50003 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | General | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/96/50003 | |
Published online | 16 November 2011 |
When do generalized entropies apply? How phase space volume determines entropy
1
Section for Science of Complex Systems, Medical University of Vienna - Spitalgasse 23, A-1090, Austria, EU
2
Santa Fe Institute - 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
a
stefan.thurner@meduniwien.ac.at
Received:
8
July
2011
Accepted:
7
October
2011
We show how the dependence of phase space volume Ω(N) on system size N uniquely determines the extensive entropy of a classical system. We give a concise criterion when this entropy is not of Boltzmann-Gibbs type but has to assume a generalized (non-additive) form. We show that generalized entropies can only exist when the dynamically (statistically) relevant fraction of degrees of freedom in the system vanishes in the thermodynamic limit. These are systems where the bulk of the degrees of freedom is frozen and statistically inactive. Systems governed by generalized entropies are therefore systems whose phase space volume effectively collapses to a lower-dimensional “surface”. We illustrate these results in three concrete examples: accelerating random walks, a microcanonical spin system on networks and constrained binomial processes. These examples suggest that a wide class of systems with “surface-dominant” statistics might in fact require generalized entropies, including self-organized critical systems such as sandpiles, anomalous diffusion, and systems with topological defects such as vortices, domains, or instantons.
PACS: 05.20.-y – Classical statistical mechanics / 02.50.Cw – Probability theory / 05.90.+m – Other topics in statistical physics, thermodynamics, and nonlinear dynamical systems (restricted to new topics in section 05)
© EPLA, 2011
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.