Statistical mechanics and dynamics of solvable models with long-range interactions

by Prof. Stefano Ruffo (Dipartimento di Energetica "S. Stecco", Universita' di Firenze, and INFN.)

Tuesday 31 Mar 2009, 16:00 → 18:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

Systems with long-range interactions, like gravitational, charged and dipolar systems, can be made extensive, but are intrinsically non additive. The violation of this basic property of thermodynamics is the origin of ensemble inequivalence, which in turn implies that specific heat can be negative in the microcanonical ensemble, temperature jumps can appear at microcanonical first order phase transitions, ergodicity may be broken. Realizing that such features may be present for a wide class of systems has renewed the interest in long-range interactions. In this seminar, I will present a review of the recent advances on the statistical mechanics and out-of-equilibrium dynamics of solvable models with long-range interactions.