2007/07/31 by Daniel S. Kosov, D. S. Kosov, Maxim F. Gelin +3 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.77.021120
published as Phys. Rev. E 77, 021120 (2008)
arxiv created 2008/02/03 · openalex publication_date 2008/02/25 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Grand canonical and canonical ensembles become equivalent in the thermodynamic limit, but when the system size is finite the results obtained in the two ensembles deviate from each other. In many important cases, the canonical ensemble provides an appropriate physical description but it is often much easier to perform the calculations in the corresponding grand canonical ensemble. We present a method to compute averages in the canonical ensemble based on calculations of the expectation values in the grand canonical ensemble. The number of particles, which is fixed in the canonical ensemble, is not necessarily the same as the average number of particles in the grand canonical ensemble.