Heat capacity in bits
| dc.creator | Fraundorf, P. | |
| dc.date | 1997-11-10 | |
| dc.date | 1999-10-01 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T03:09:25Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T03:09:25Z | |
| dc.description | Information theory this century has clarified the 19th century work of Gibbs, and has shown that natural units for temperature kT, defined via 1/T=dS/dE, are energy per nat of information uncertainty. This means that (for any system) the total thermal energy E over kT is the log-log derivative of multiplicity with respect to energy, and (for all b) the number of base-b units of information lost about the state of the system per b-fold increase in the amount of thermal energy therein. For ``un-inverted'' (T>0) systems, E/kT is also a temperature-averaged heat capacity, equaling ``degrees-freedom over two'' for the quadratic case. In similar units the work-free differential heat capacity C_v/k is a ``local version'' of this log-log derivative, equal to bits of uncertainty gained per 2-fold increase in temperature. This makes C_v/k (unlike E/kT) independent of the energy zero, explaining in statistical terms its usefulness for detecting both phase changes and quadratic modes. | |
| dc.description | 7 pages (3 figs, 16 refs) RevTeX; clarify, new plots; comments http://www.umsl.edu/~fraundor/cm971174.html | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9711074 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9711074 | |
| dc.identifier | Amer. J. Phys. 71 (11) 1142-1151 (November 2003) | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/27875 | |
| dc.subject | Statistical Mechanics | |
| dc.subject | Chemical Physics | |
| dc.subject | Physics Education | |
| dc.title | Heat capacity in bits | |
| dc.type | text |